goneroan

Yield

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:10:41 GMT

continued from previous post - The Sea of Faith [a]

Hammer Bay
The Citadel

Pete almost threw a fit over Voght teleporting them to the Citadel. All of Voght's assurances that Kitty and the unborn child would be unharmed were ignored. He didn't quit protesting until Kitty stepped up to Voght and told him, "We're going. Come along or not."

"Pryde, yer gonna be the death of me," he muttered.

Voght raised her eyebrows, Kitty nodded, and the three of them dissolved into mist.

They resolved back into flesh in the heart of the Citadel, amidst a gathering of Magneto's most trusted advisors: Scanner, Frenzy, Renee Majcomb, Mystique, Milan, Katu, Verity, Haze, Duslov and Pirouette. Voght materialized Pete and Kitty with her in the middle of the room.

Kitty thought seriously about puking. Voght's teleports were never pleasant, but she felt particularly nauseous this time. Pete's hands on her shoulders and the warmth of his body behind her steadied her through it.

When she had control, she looked up and found Magnus' hot blue eyes locked on her. Despite the anger that seethed off him visibly in a shimmer of blue-green energy, concern marked his expression.

"Katherine?"

"I'm okay," she said.

"She's not okay and I don't want her being 'ported hither and yon like a bloody ping pong ball," Pete snapped.

"I'm fine," Kitty insisted, straightening and shrugging his hands away.

"She's pregnant," Voght told them.

"Could yer flap yer bleedin' mouth a little wider," Pete grumbled.

Voght's mouth ticked up in an almost smile. "I could try."

"Kitty!" Renee exclaimed, looking concerned. Research scientist, colleague of Moira MacTaggert and Henry McCoy, native Genoshan, and veteran of a human/mutate/mutant insurgent group during the long civil war, before all that she had been a physician. The news dropped so carelessly into the tense meeting room obviously brought that to the fore.

~So that's what had you up so early,~ Scanner commented. ~Sorry.~

Voght crossed her arms and said coolly, "Was it a secret? The way you were carrying on, I imagine the entire apartment building heard."

"Well, I just flippin' found out when you popped in, didn't I?"

Magnus studied Kitty's face.

"Everything is well with you, Katherine? You are pleased?" he asked her.

Kitty smiled at him. "This wasn't planned."

Magnus turned a gimlet eye on Pete.

"'Ere, don't look at me like that," Pete protested.

Kitty laughed and caught Pete's hand, drawing him up next to her. "But we're both happy."

"Then I am as well," Magnus said. Then he surprised her by patting Pete's shoulder before drawing her into a gentle embrace and kissing her forehead. "You remind me on this worst of mornings that there may yet be joy in all our lives, my dear."

Kitty tightened her hand on Pete's.

"What's happened?"

Milan spoke up. "I have been monitoring the information stream. Several days ago, the US government initiated a covert operation codenamed Clean Sweep. Their new BuSec has managed to muffle the news media. The Americans have no idea of what is really happening inside their country or the scope of it."

"If you think it sounds bad," Haze added, "you're right. Before I left the Marines, there were already rumors floating through the military that the Creed Administration had a plan that only began with the CMRA. Clean Sweep would be the next step."

"What is Clean Sweep?" Kitty asked cautiously.

"All registered mutants are being 'detained' and relocated," Milan said.

An uneasy rustle of movement ran through the gathered cabinet, movement replacing stifled words. Their eyes moved as one to Magneto at the head of the conference table. It was Magneto the ruler of New Genosha, the most feared mutant on earth too, not Magnus the man.

"Over and over again, I have fought to forestall this," he whispered, the menace in his voice striking through them all. "I sought to make New Genosha a haven for mutants, but it is not enough."

"What will you do?" Pete asked steadily. "What do you want all of us to do? 'Cause I ain't for letting this go on, either."

Magneto inclined his head.

"Have you heard from the X-Men?" Kitty asked. "Do they know about this?"

"Those fools are the reason this is happening," Frenzy snarled. She pointed her finger at Kitty. "How many times have they fought Lord Magneto to save the likes of the government and people that are behind this now?"

"Cargill, enough," Magneto said. He shook his head. "I have no idea what the X-Men know. What they will do … nothing, not so long as Charles remains lost in his own delusion that mutants and humans can coexist without violent conflict."

"They aren't all blind," Pete remarked. He had a cigarette out and in his hand, but after a thoughtful look at Kitty, hadn't lit it. Instead, he played with it, rolling the cylinder between his fingers. A frown marked his unshaven face. "Logan won't just go along and I can't imagine Dom or Cable following the Prof's orders like little lambs. None of X-Force, really, those kids believe in hit first and hit hard, it's why Xavier had so many problems with them after Cable took over training them."

Kitty offered, "I have contact protocols, you know. When Pete and I came here, Remy made sure I had a back channel contact with him and Logan that the other X-Men don't know about."

'A good thief always knows the way out before they go in, Kit,' he'd murmured as he'd drilled her with names and numbers and pass codes. 'These people aren't Guild, but they're beholden to them, and they'll get you what you need if you go to them.'

Pete chuckled.

"Dom did the same with me. Worst case scenario, she said X-Force'd bust us both out of here if we needed." He grinned at Magneto. "No offense, but Dom hasn't had good experiences in Genosha."

"She won't have good experiences in the US if Clean Sweep goes on," Haze said. He slapped his hand against the tabletop. "We don't have the troops or the global standing to go toe to toe with the States. We don't have the kind of proof it takes to get the fucking UN to stand up to them either. Creed and his people have been smart about this, they've let the radicals keep feeding the public's fears and build up their hate, while the administration's talked moderately in public. No one's going to believe the US has set out to commit genocide until they've had the proof shoved in their faces like a handful of shit."

"How many countries will be willing to do anything even if they are confronted with incontrovertible proof?" Renee asked bitterly. "Did anyone do anything when the truth about Genosha and the mutate bonding process was revealed? Other than cut off trade so that everything became worse here for everyone?"

"Milan, Katherine, please obtain whatever information and proofs you may," Magneto instructed. "Use whatever methods you wish, even whatever contacts you have outside New Genosha. You too, Wisdom."

He stood up and walked to the window. Dawn was still a dim line of lighter gray along the eastern horizon. The lights were on again in Hammer Bay, though. No more fires burned in ravaged rubble. The country had finally begun to rebuild. A rapidly growing trickle of mutants had begun immigrating from around the world.

"I have a responsibility to this country and the people who have come here at my behest," Magneto said quietly. "I have a responsibility to all our people, to mutants all over this world too. I cannot stand by as so many did before. But I cannot simply indulge my rage and strike at the United States, leaving Genosha defenseless."

He tightened one hand into a fist and turned back to the room.

"But when we have a target, we will strike."

United States
Idaho

Wolverine loved this kind of country. The jagged edge of the Bitterroot Range knifing across the sky, the ice cold air rife with the scents of snow and game and evergreen, the freedom and emptiness of it. Soft pine needles gave under his feet and the earth beneath was wet and smelled like peat. He'd spotted the spoor of hares and lynx in the snow, followed the track of hunter and prey to where it ended in a tuft of fur and red spotted white. His feral nature felt at ease among the trees and rocks, the dark cold valleys and the sun touched heights.

It made the installation, built in the harshest isolated valley accessible by wheeled vehicle, even more of an abomination, a foul blot in the clean wilderness. The cruel wind howling down the rocky walls of the valley carried the stench of it.

The buildings were all dark cinderblock cubes. Each one fenced in with electrified razor wire and chain link. The gates and doors were watched by battlesuited guards. Snow dusted the roofs and grounds, scuffed and filthy along the walkways.

A sixteen foot high sheer wall circled the entire facility. Glass shards glinted on top of it. Two six foot deep ditches, each five feet wide, ran parallel to both sides of the wall, filled with foot high spikes and rolls of more razor wire. A swathe of earth had been covered in bare concrete beyond that. A single set of heavily guarded gates permitted ingress or egress.

Beyond that were two more high chain link fences. Cybernetically enhanced Alsatians prowled between the two fences.

Watchtowers sat within the walled portion of the compound, each with clear firing zones on the bare concrete open space.

A square-sided black tower rose up highest from the center of the compound, topped with radar and satellite dishes and a single helicopter landing pad. Behind squatted a massive pyramidal structure sunk deep in the earth.

Silent as ghosts, Gambit, Domino, and Cable crawled up next to Wolverine where he crouched at the top of sheer cliff with a clear sight line into the valley. The rest of Black Team waited just inside the tree line. Wolverine's sensitive hearing picked up Rictor griping about getting pine tar in his hair and Shatterstar telling him he should have braided it as he had done his. Betsy told them both to shut up. Jubes and Marrow were quiet.

Gambit snaked closer to the edge and brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes. A soundless intake of air marked his only reaction.

Dom and Cable started their own examination.

"Looks like my old high school," Domino quipped.

"Didn't know you went to high school, Nina," Wolverine replied.

He felt her shrug.

"Do the fighting pits in Madripoor count?"

"Went to the school of hard knocks, neh, chere?" Gambit commented.

"I hear you passed your classes on the street in New Orleans."

"And the Velvet Ministry 'fore that."

"Are we done proving how tough we all are?" Cable hissed.

"Jus' makin' conversation, mon ami," Gambit said imperturbably. "You figure they built that thing to stop any rooftop insertions or they just got Egyptians on the brain like you?"

"Flonq you, LeBeau."

"Don't know. Domino, it be worth it?"

"Nah."

Wolverine snorted while Cable growled his displeasure.

"That's got to be where they have the prisoners," Gambit said.

Cable studied the pyramid through his own binoculars again. "Any clue how many levels it's got?"

"No way to judge from here," Domino answered. "Nate, can you scan for how many people are in there?"

"No, the entire thing is laced with power suppressor fields and psi-shields. If I punch through, it's going to set off all kinds of alarms."

"Damn it," she muttered. "We need to know more before we even think about going in."

"Seven levels, six below the ground," Gambit murmured in a distracted voice.

Wolverine twisted his head to the side and checked the Cajun. Gambit's eyes were unfocused; he was obviously concentrating on another sense. A light sweat broke out on his face.

"Neat trick," Cable said. "How do you know?"

"Spatial sense. Part of the kinetic charge." He hissed out a breath, sounding pained. "Can't charge living things so they feel different, hein? But I can sense them."

"How many are in there?"

"Can't tell, homme. Like trying to count the bees in a hive by touch." Gambit closed his eyes and bit his lip, then shook his head. A drop of blood slid from one nostril. "Non. Too many. Thousands."

"Thousands," Cable said flatly.

"Fits with the Clean Sweep schedule we got," Wolverine said. "Quit pushing, kid."

Gambit opened his eyes. The scarlet irises were a thin line around dilated pupils. He sniffed hard and wiped the drop of blood away carelessly. "Bad feelings coming off that place like stink, mon ami. That's all."

Cable grunted. "It looks like shit on the Astral Plane too."

"Do we go in?"

Domino scanned the fence line and the wall. "What do you bet there's a mine field?"

"Do we look like suckers, Dom?" Cable asked. He frowned fiercely. "It's like the Berlin Wall. Vehicle traps and a free fire killing zone. Stab their eyes."

"My team's good, Cable," Gambit said, "but we're geared to sneak and peek, not search and rescue. 'Star and Marrow are strictly close combat, same as Logan and Domino."

"Hey, I fire a mean gun."

"No doubt 'bout that," Gambit agreed.

"No, Nina," Wolverine added. He could see what Gambit was talking about. "He isn't dissing you. Just laying out what resources we've got with us. Pros and cons."

Cable nodded at that. "Go on."

"Rictor's Black Team's power house. You know what he can do," Gambit went on. "He could bring down a mountain on this place. But we got no way of getting the prisoners out, keeping them safe or getting them away. We need to have a plan before we start something here."

"What do you figure?" Cable said, deferring to Gambit as Team leader and more importantly, someone who knew what he was doing for the moment. He'd respected the thief's instincts and strategic mind since they'd all been taken captive in Genosha. Gambit was a survivor, something Cable appreciated. Ideals were well and good, but they didn't accomplish much if the people who held them were dead and buried.

"Finish scouting in close after nightfall. That's Wolverine's job. Then me and Lady Luck need to go in, no powers, and figure out exactly what sort of defenses this place has against attacks.

Gambit wriggled back from the cliff edge. Dom and Cable followed him. Wolverine trailed them after one last, hate-filled look at the mutant containment facility. The four of them used the cover of rocks and stunted pines to stay out of sight as they returned to the rest of the team.

"It's there, isn't it?" Rictor asked as they filtered into the shadowed clearing where the rest of Black Team waited.

Wolverine didn't see Marrow. A quick look around didn't find her either. It took a closer look and a long inhalation to catch her scent before he located the ex-Morlock. She was high in a scrawny pine, watching. The chameleon cloth of body armor and the gray-white of her bone spikes blended with the bark of the tree. Only the shock of pink-red hair showed up.

Gambit obviously knew where she was too. He didn't even look up, but said, "You can hear up there, petite?"

"Better'n you, Pretty," she rasped from her perch.

A shrug was his only response.

"Yes, it's there," Cable said.

Gambit sank down until he was sitting on his heels. A brush of his hand through the pine needles revealed dark earth. He swept it smooth and began sketching the layout of the installation.

"Cable," he said. "You want to give everybody a picture of what's down there?"

Cable didn't bother linking Wolverine since he'd been the forward observer.

"Done," he said a long minute later.

"Fekt," Shatterstar commented.

"What Shatty said," Jubilee added. "I mean, that place has some seriously bad mojo going."

"Mojo is there?" Shatterstar snapped, surging to his feet and drawing both swords. His silver eyes flashed. He looked ready to rush into the valley and take on anything and everyone he found there.

"Yikes, no," Jubilee exclaimed. "I meant mojo like magic, like bad voodoo vibes, 'Star. Not like giant sleazoid slugs that have enslaved your people in another dimension. Sooorrrry."

"Sit down, 'Star," Gambit said quietly.

Shatterstar sheathed his swords and sank back down, looking vaguely sheepish. Rictor patted his thigh and he began playing with the end of his coppery colored braid.

"Pay attention, kids," Gambit directed. "You're our back-up in this." He began explaining what they'd seen, what he'd sensed, and what while not visible probably existed, such a mine field and motion sensors. "Wolverine is going to move in closer soon as the sun starts going down. Psylocke, I want you to link to him, give us everything he gets. If there's trouble, I don't want to find out about it when Wolverine don't check in."

Psylocke nodded. "No problem. Logan and I have linked many times."

Wolverine grunted. He couldn't fault the Cajun's plan so far. Gambit was letting him do his thing without fettering him with someone else to watch out for the way Cyke would have. Betsy keeping tabs in his head wouldn't distract him the way worrying about Jubilee or one of the kids might have. It was a good use of the resources he had on hand.

"Soon as it's dark, Domino and I are going inside." Gambit lifted his head and stared at Cable. "Don't be using that psi-link you got. If they have any sort psi-sensors, you'll trip them."

"Got it," Cable said.

Gambit looked at him another moment and nodded.

"You're not going to tell me not to use it?" Domino asked.

"Non. You aren't the type to rely on anyone."

"Hmn. You know, Remy, you're smarter than you look."

"So what about the rest of us?"

"I want someone in the pilot's seat with the transport warmed up and ready to launch when we go in. The rest of you get to wait and come in hot if something goes wrong." Gambit exchanged a look with Domino. "That happens, then take the place down. Got a feeling none of us want to end up in there permanent."

Wolverine chuckled.

"Just a little understatement there, Gumbo."

"I could break out."

"Of course ya could."

"Jus' don't want have to," Gambit finished. "Master Thief don't want to get caught, mais non. Embarrassing. Bad for my reputation."

"Whatever ya say, Gumbo."

"So what we do until dusk?" Jubilee asked.

"Take a nap," Gambit advised.

Jubilee glared at him. "You're as bad as Wolvie."

Gambit was unruffled. "Petite, I take that as a compliment, coming from you." He pulled out a deck of cards. "Poker, anyone?"

"I will take watch after Marrow," Shatterstar declared.

"You do that."

"Let her stay up there, 'Star," Rictor griped. "She likes it and we don't have to look at her."

From her perch in the tree, Marrow snarled quietly. A pine cone whistled down and thumped next to Rictor, who looked up and glared.

"Don't start shakin' that tree, Julio," Gambit said. "Don't use your powers at all until you need them. Understand?" A thread of steel, the voice of a commander, ran through his words. He never even looked up from the cards he'd begun shuffling. "And Sarah? Don't be throwing shit unless you want to be shoveling it in 'Ro's garden when we get back."

Hours later, as Wolverine prepared to descend into the valley, accompanied by Domino and Gambit, Psylocke approached them. Domino was double checking all of her guns and knives and nodded to the telepath but didn't speak. Cable had already slipped up to their observation post on the cliff's edge. He would watch the compound through his night vision binoculars until they were out again.

"No offense to Domino, but why didn't you chose me to go in with you?" Psylocke asked Gambit.

"Because you're my second in command, 'lizabeth. Ric and 'Star would listen Cable, because they used to be in X-Force and they're used to taking his orders, but Jubilee and Marrow are both hotheads. Something goes wrong, you got to keep them from acting without thinking."

Time, revelations and the severing of Psylocke's relationship with Archangel had eased the tension between Gambit and her. She'd accepted the darkness and danger she'd sensed in him as a part of him that didn't threaten the X-Men and he'd dismissed the rancor he'd felt over her attempted probe of his mind when he'd been in a coma after Israel. They still didn't really like each other, but they got along. They both had a taste for the finer things in life too. It had still surprised everyone but Wolverine when Gambit requested her as Black Team's telepath. It worked, too.

She nodded at his explanation. "All right. Logan? Do you want establish the link now? It's easier than at a distance."

"Yeah, let's do it, darlin'."

He felt the purple tickle of her psychic presence slide along his psi-shields. He willed them to open for her. Like butterfly wings, her thoughts met and touched his. The link formed smoothly, running along mental channels left by previous contact between them.

~Do you hear me?~

~Just fine, darlin'.~

He glanced at the other two going with him. Domino had pulled a thin, silky black balaclava over her head to conceal the pallor of her face. She pulled her ponytail through a hole in the back. He shook his head. Even Dom had her vanities; long hair on merc was just an indulgence. No wonder she'd never got after Shatterstar for his waist length mane. A set of red-lensed night vision goggles hung around her neck.

The Cajun had shrugged off his heavy parka and handed it Jubilee. Without it, the chameleon cloth of his uniform blurred into the same colors as his surroundings. Even looking straight at him, it was hard to focus. Like looking at something through heat haze.

"Everybody ready, kids?"

"Always," Domino said.

Gambit pulled his balaclava on. He became virtually invisible except his eyes, the red and black startling even to Wolverine.

"After you, mon ami."

Westchester
Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning

"Sam, I applaud your concern for our fellow mutants, but I can only council patience," Xavier said. "These matters of law are being pursued through the courts. If the X-Men interfere — "

"Ya mean stop innocent people from being rounded up?" Sam interrupted contemptuously.

The War Room held every X-Man it could. They were crowded in, shoulder to shoulder, no one willing to leave the decisions to just their leaders. The final report brought by Black Team from Idaho had been seared into their minds. Cable and Psylocke had linked to everyone in the mansion over Xavier's protests and shown them exactly what they'd found: the containment facility and its surroundings. The processing house, where mutants were sterilized and tattooed, deprived finally not only of any mutant ability, citizenship, or humanity, but even of their names.

Gambit and Domino had hacked a computer in the administration offices and tapped into the security system inside the pyramid. They'd downloaded a disc with footage of the mutants inside. The mutants inside, pale, naked, hairless and collared, already numbered in the thousands. They lay on the bunk slabs or shuffled down the corridors to the feeding station to eat once a day.

Most disturbing had been their silence. The security surveillance didn't include sound, but Shatterstar had pointed out that none of the prisoners spoke. Their mouths never moved. Not even the children.

They had all reached the limits of their horror when they saw the children imprisoned with the same soulless efficiencies as the adults.

"The results could be catastrophic for our cause," Xavier continued. "Our dream of co-existence depends on proving that mutants aren't a threat to homo sapiens."

"But we are," Rogue interjected from her place leaning against the railing of the balcony in the War Room. She wriggled her gloved fingers.

"That is the wrong attitude to take," Storm reproved.

Xavier nodded to her in gratitude. She'd taken a station just behind his hoverchair, one of her graceful hands resting on the back.

"We can't break the people in these Mucons out without inflicting and maybe taking some heavy casualties ourselves," Cyclops said. He flanked Xavier on the other side but didn't stand as close. "We have no place to take them and no sufficient infrastructure to move them if we did."

Wolverine flexed his claws in and out. "So we do nothing?"

"Of course we do something. The evidence Gambit and Domino brought out must be brought to the attention of the proper authorities, perhaps the news media," Xavier replied promptly. He sounded calm and in control. His hands were folded on his lap.

"You've lost it, Chuck."

"Logan — "

"Sir, that just ain't enough," Sam said.

"The alternative is to ignite a war between human and mutant," Xavier snapped. "I refuse to do that. All that we have worked for these years would be lost, all my efforts wasted. That is not acceptable."

"I don't give a damn what ya find acceptable," Sam came back. He stood tall and strong, almost the antithesis of Xavier, at the far end of the conference table. Cable and Domino flanked him on one side, the previously integrated members of X-Force on the other.

Sam looked around the room, meeting each person's eyes once.

"What's not acceptable is doing nothing!"

A murmur rushed through the War Room. Heads nodded. Others looked uncertain, their gazes returning to Xavier. He was their compass north. If so, then Sam, blue-eyed, blond-haired, soft-spoken Sam from the Kentucky hills, epitomized the southern pole. Too many of them were ready to gravitate to him instead.

He said: "The war's already here, sir. The government has declared it."

"Sam, we can't descend to their level — "

A finger pointed at Xavier.

"You ain't Mahatma Gandhi. We tried it your way. Over and over. Show them we ain't out to hurt them, do it the peaceful way, stay within the law. Every time it's been thrown in our faces."

A dull silence spread through the room.

"Project Wideawake, Sentinels, Nimrod, O:ZT," Sam said, ticking them off. "None of them stopped because someone suddenly decided mutants were folks too! We stopped them. Just like we stopped all those mutants that thought humans were nothing but nature's slowpokes. We can do that, 'cause we're strong. 'Cause we stand together."

He addressed the gathered X-Men. "I think we all know what it's like to be out there all on our own, with no one to stand for you but your own self. It ain't no good and you got no chance when someone comes after you."

Nods of agreement greeted that declaration.

"Well, that's what all those other mutants that are being trucked off and locked up are facing."

"Sam — "

"I ain't done."

Xavier narrowed his eyes, but there was no chance he could silence or modify Sam's thoughts without someone in the crowd recognizing what he'd done. He could see the suspicion in the way Cable watched him over Sam's shoulder, left eye flaring bright with power. The other telepaths were watching him too, Betsy looking cynical and hard, Emma with chilly scorn, Jono playing with a cigarette but alert, Sage neutral as one of her computers and even Jean, ready to stop anything he did telepathically.

Sam took a deep breath.

"Someone's got to stand for those folks. All this time I thought that's what the X-Men did. I thought we were heroes, even if most folks didn't ever know the truth. We were protecting good people. That was the Dream. That someday no one would need protecting from anyone else, not mutant from human or human from mutant. But someday ain't today!"

He'd only wanted to protect them, Xavier thought. He'd taught them to fight, but he'd tried to instill a respect for the law and life within them. They held so much raw power in their hands. Even the best intentions could go astray if they didn't have limits placed on their actions. Magneto was the best example of that.

It was why he'd chosen Scott as his first student, because the boy had the right set of beliefs and neuroses to shape into a strong leader who still wouldn't waver from what Xavier taught him.

It was why he'd taken Wolverine — to keep a leash on him. The man was to dangerous to let him be recruited by someone like Magneto. He'd never quite been able to control him, but a nudge here and an infatuation with Jean had kept him close until his own loyalties bound him to the group. Wolverine believed in honor and that would keep him from leaving his team-mates.

He knew he'd crippled their efforts too often by demanding that the X-Men always be reactive, but the dangers of a pro-active stance were too great. The potential for a mistake was just too large. So long as they were defending themselves, they retained a moral superiority. Without that, they became the terrorists the government named them.

"Have you finished now, Sam?" he asked.

Sam met his gaze without flinching.

"Almost, sir. I just got one last thing to say."

Xavier waited, projecting serenity.

"Your way is only going to buy us all an early grave."

Behind him, Storm gasped. Xavier squeezed his eyes shut briefly.

"Samuel, I will not allow the X-Men to be associated with an armed — in this case superpowered — rebellion against a duly constituted government. If that is your attention, then the X-Men will be forced to restrain you."

"You do what you think you got to do, sir. I would never presume to tell you different," Sam declared.

"Magneto's way is wrong," Xavier stated.

Wolverine stiffened and Gambit looked at him derisively. Cable sneered before beginning to cough. He realized they'd guessed he'd eavesdropped mentally on the War Room discussion that had preceded the mission to Idaho. No one spoke, but Xavier recognized that he'd diminished himself in their eyes.

"I gotta ask, Chuck. Who do ya think is going to help ya throw Sam here in jail for going his own way?"

"I left Alpha Flight and came to the X-Men because I was sick of acting as a government flunky," Northstar startled everyone by speaking. "I have no obligation to the American government and only disgust for the people in power here. I believe Sam is right though: some things are not to accepted. To stand by, to do nothing, is to assume responsibility for what happens. This I will not do."

He walked through the crowd of X-Men and took a place among X-Force.

Wolverine nodded to him.

Xavier wanted to scream at them, to force them back in line. Everything was shattering.

"Sir, these people want every mutant on the planet dead. They're so full of hate nothing can get through to them. They spread it like poison through other folks. They're mad dogs. Down home, we know that the only way of dealing with something gone rabid is to kill it and put it out of its misery 'fore bites someone else."

"We have nothing more to say to each other if that is the stance you wish to take, Samuel. I would appreciate it you left this house."

Sam's eyes flickered with hurt, but he didn't falter.

"I figured."

He glanced over his shoulder at Domino.

"You mind if I use one of the old safehouses for a couple of days?"

"Why don't I show you where the new ones are?" she replied.

Jimmy Proudstar slapped Sam's shoulder, staggering him.

"You didn't think you were walking out all by yourself, did you?"

Xavier watched, horrified, as Meltdown, Sunspot, Siryn, Rictor and Shatterstar joined Warpath and Northstar in switching their loyalties to Sam Guthrie. The feeling intensified. Psylocke gave him a jaundiced look before smiling at Sam.

"Room for one more, Sam?" she asked.

Sam gaped then nodded.

"I'm with you too," Marrow declared. "I've never thought this make nice shit was going to work. Looks like I was right."

Marrow's defection didn't surprise or hurt nearly as much as losing Betsy Braddock. It was like seeing Colossus join Magneto. The loss of a core X-Man struck at Xavier and infuriated him.

He stared at the vicious little psychotic he'd tried so hard to reform as she paused beside that lawless murderer Gambit, leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. One of the bone spikes growing out of her cheekbone scratched his face. He didn't flinch, instead wrapping his arms around her in a fond embrace.

He let go when she stepped back.

"I always wanted to do that." She reached up and wiped the blood away from his cheek.

"What, make me bleed?"

"Kiss you. Sorry."

Gambit laughed. "Nothing to be sorry for, Sarah. Go on now."

"Come with us, Cajun. You don't belong with these hypocrites."

Xavier thought the thief would go. But Gambit shook his head.

"Can't go, but Gambit won't stop you, chere."

"So long, suckers," Marrow said with sneer toward the remaining X-Men.

Sam and his faction stared across a gulf at the rest of the X-Men.

"We don't have to be enemies."

Xavier dismissed them.

"You've made your choices. Leave."

"You're not our enemies, Sam," Scott said. "We won't let that happen."

They walked out. Marrow paused in the doorway and spat. After a long moment, one more went after them, Dani Moonstar. Cable and Domino went last. Cable exchanged a searching, regretful look with his father and Jean. If there were telepathic words between them it was on a channel too tight for even Xavier to tap.

"Good job, Chuck," Wolverine said sardonically.

Storm laid her hand on his shoulder. "Do not allow this to discourage you, Charles. They are foolish, hotheaded children."

"They ain't kids, 'Ro," Wolverine contradicted. "They ain't been kids in a long time — since Chuck pulled them into the whole New Mutants thing. 'Course this school never taught them nothing but fighting."

"It's Cable and Magneto's fault!" Storm's rarely roused temper seemed about to let loose. "They would never have defied the Professor if they hadn't been taught to by those two."

"Lay off, 'Ro."

"If you agree with them, why didn't you go, Logan?" Xavier demanded.

Wolverine snorted. "You lot need someone like the Cajun and me to watch your backs. Those kids'll look after each other."

"Anyone that disagrees with the Professor is wrong, hunh?" Cecelia asked quietly.

"Stop it, all of you!" Jubilee yelled. She had her arm around Paige's shoulders, while the blond girl cried. "It's okay, Paige."

"I should've gone with him," Paige said. "He's my brother."

"I believe I've had enough of this debate," Beast commented. "I'm going back to my lab. Comm me if any decisions are reached." He vaulted over a railing to the floor and left.

"We still need to make our own plans," Cyclops stated. "We may not be as forceful as Sam's group wants to be but that doesn't mean there aren't measures we can take. Correct, Professor?"

Xavier steepled his fingers.

"Of course, Scott."

Rogue sidled over to Gambit. She brushed his shoulder with hers.

"Thought you'd take off with them."

"Did you, chere?"

"Sure."

"Guess you don't know me so well as you think."

"I got a chunk of your memories in my head, Swamp Rat. I know ya better than I ever wanted to."

Gambit gave her an unreadable glance. "Ain't that the truth."

Xavier glared at them as Wolverine said, "Come on, kids. Nothing's getting done tonight. I know a bar in Torytown where they still don't care if you're mutant or Martian, long as you pay for the damages with cash. Let's get drunk."

Jubilee patted Paige on the back again and caught Wolverine's eye. "Do they card?"

Gambit laughed. "The kind of bars Logan hangs out in, chere?"

"Get real," Rogue finished.

"Logan, you are not taking two underage girls to a bar!" Storm objected.

"They want to come, they can come," Wolverine said. "They're old enough to go out and fight and get shot at, they're sure'n hell old enough to decide if they want to shitfaced, far as I'm concerned."

Even deep underground they heard the weather let loose. Storm looked self-satisfied. She crossed her arms.

"I do not think any of you will be going out in a hail storm."

"Storm, that's enough," Jean said, speaking up for the first time. "Let them go."

As they started to file toward the War Room door, Storm called out, "Remy."

Gambit paused and walked back to her. They were so close to him Xavier couldn't keep from overhearing them if he'd wanted to.

"What you want, padnat?"

Storm's eyes settled on Rogue in conversation with Wolverine.

"Don't … "

"Fall stupid in love wit' that girl again?" Gambit finished. He shook his head. "Not going to do that, Stormy."

"Don't call me that," she said absently. "Goddess, what a disaster."

Gambit sighed. "Ouai."

Wolverine and Rogue walked out together. Jubilee urged Paige after them. Gambit's gaze followed them.

"Are you ever sorry I brought you to the X-Men, Remy?"

He touched Storm's newly short cap of hair. It looked similar to when she'd returned to the X-Men with Gambit in tow. "I don't think you want me to answer that."

"Rogue."

Another sigh.

"I remember we had so much fun when we were just two thieves helping ourselves to whatever we wished all across the South," she said. It came out wistful. "You used to laugh."

"Only because of you, padnat. I'd forgotten until we hooked up."

"And now I have."

"It's still in you," he assured her.

"There's so little left to laugh about in our lives."

"Just means we have try harder. Come on, 'Ro, let go, live a little. You don't do that, there's nothing worth fighting for."

"So speaks the hedonist."

He smiled brilliantly. Xavier could feel the man using his empathy, wrapping Storm in a cocoon of warm emotion, soothing the jagged edges of her emotions. He narrowed his eyes, trying to analyze the difference between Gambit's elusive psi abilities and the telepathy he was familiar with. He tried to sense Gambit on the Astral Plane again, but the man remained a ghost there.

Gambit's eyes met his.

"Professor."

"Gambit. Most of Black Team just walked out. Will you still be able to — "

"Ouai. Prefer working alone anyway, me."

"Well. Good. Perhaps you should hurry, if you mean to join Logan and Rogue."

Unlike Storm, he intended to encourage Gambit's ill-fated attachment to Rogue. It bound him to X-Men and he was, despite his past, useful. Even if he did think the man read him too well sometimes.

As when Gambit gave Xavier that knowing look.

Gambit caught Storm's hand in his and tugged. "Come on, padnat. You come wit' us, you can make sure no one corrupts ma petite or the little Guthrie girl."

Storm balked only an instant then followed him.

Xavier turned his attention back to the remaining X-Men and shoring up the cracks in the teams. They were filled with doubts. Wolverine's acidic comments hadn't helped, another reason he hadn't objected to the man taking off. Gambit's cynicism was equally harmful, but wouldn't shake Storm's dedication to their dream.

He looked at the ones left and tried to summon his old confidence and surety.

"My X-Men … "

Hammer Bay
The Citadel

Sam Guthrie's youthful face was set into the hard lines of a soldier.

He stared out from the videoscreen in the Citadel, addressing Magneto from an undisclosed location in the US. The contact had come through Pete Wisdom, courtesy of the contacts he retained with Domino.

"We need transports or a teleporter, sir," Sam told Magneto. "We've already figured out where we'll take 'em, at least at first. I don't figure it matters much, anywhere's going to be better than the government's damn 'facilities.'"

He spat the last word with a loathing as deep and wounded as Magneto's own words could be.

"I know that I'm asking more than a sane man should, 'cause you got your own country to look out for, but you've always said you stood for all mutants, everywhere. That's what we need now."

"Are the X-Men asking this of me or of New Genosha?" Magneto inquired. His expression gave nothing away.

Sam laughed harshly.

"This ain't the X-Men asking," he said. He lifted his hand to the black on red comm badge clipped to his uniform's throat. He ripped it off and slammed it down on the table before him. "I had enough of the Professor's way. Me and some of the others, we're going to do something about what's going on. Don't matter if you help or not, though there's a lot of people in those containment facilities that'll need more than just my people can take care of."

"You know where these camps are?"

"Got a list, thanks to Gambit. Hell, we got everything the X-Men have. Black Team did a scout on one of them in Idaho." Sam looked sick. "I never thought my country could do something like this. Lord, it's bad, sir. Bad as you can imagine."

"Xavier still refuses to act?"

"Still thinks he can do it his way, never mind who gets ground up while the rest of us is waiting on the shining day."

Magneto thought how cynical the young man sounded and felt real regret. Sam's belief in the good in all men had heartened him many times, foreign as it was to his own experience.

"Will you help us?" Sam asked bluntly.

"What is your plan?"

"A surgical strike on the containment facility in Idaho first. We got the most data on it, thanks to Gambit's team. Four of them are with my people now. Even the folk that didn't come with us won't try to stop us, I think."

Sam leaned closer to the video pickup. "There's seven thousand or more mutants in the Idaho camp, sir. It's way up in the Bitterroot Mountains, the closest town's a wide spot on the road called Shoup. They all been collared and tattooed. Far as we can figure it, they ain't even allowed to talk to each other in there. Those bastards keep 'em inside the main building, don't even give 'em no clothes. So we can't just bust 'em out and leave 'em there in the cold. "

Magneto breathed deeply. It was the horror he'd sworn he'd save his mutant brethren from, the same monstrous play that had been acted out on the stage of Europe in his childhood. The names of the victims, Jew, Rom, gay, black or mutant, mattered not. The old, ever present rage kindled into life inside him.

He'd sought to make New Genosha a safe place for mutants. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough while humans were free to perpetrate new atrocities on his people in other countries.

"I was hoping you would let us bring 'em into New Genosha."

"Our borders are open to any mutant, from any country, Samuel. Bring them here. We will provide teleporters, ships, planes — whatever transport you consider most practical."

Magneto forced open his fists.

"I have been waiting for this."

"I figure this'll mean war between you all and the States."

"Probably," Shadowcat said from where she sat. She waved at the video pickup. "Hi, Sam."

He managed a tight smile toward her.

"Kitty."

She glanced at Pete sitting next to her, looking foul tempered. He hadn't smoked a cigarette since they discovered her pregnancy. Thank everything that his drinking couldn't contribute to fetal alcohol syndrome. She couldn't imagine living with him if he'd been going cold turkey on two addictions. He was bad enough as it was. She would have had to kill him if it had been both.

"If we go in covert and don't leave behind a standard energy signature or a signed 'Magneto was here' card, we can make them work for it," she said. "Make them declare war on New Genosha. That makes them look like the bad guy instead of us. There are plenty of other countries with no sympathy for the US. We can play on that. They may not do anything because they won't want the truth to come to light, you know."

"Maybe we need to leave our own calling card," Sam said. "Call our selves something."

"Why not X-Force?" Kitty asked.

Sam held up the smashed comm badge. "Xavier don't want nothing X to get dirty with what we do. According to him we'll be terrorists."

He glanced down at his hand, turned it over and let the broken badge fall.

"What do you all think about the Mutant Resistance Force?"

Magneto cocked an eyebrow.

"The Resistance?"

Sam nodded.

"Just like in France. Except we're going to do a hell of lot more. One way or the other, we're going to do what has to be done. Whatever it takes."

Magneto nodded.

"Yes, Sam, whatever it takes. No matter how much we regret it."

"I never held with killing for no reason, sir. It's why I stood against you so many times. But the one thing I know for sure is that I'd regret doing nothing this time a hell of lot more."

Westchester
Xavier's Institute of Higher Learning

Paige Guthrie spent most of the next morning sleeping off her hangover after she spent an hour in the bathroom puking.

The stories about the way Wolverine and Gambit could drink were all true. So too were the ones about their fondness for kicking redneck ass. Storm had waded right in too after someone made a remark about getting some brown sugar. Rogue may have thrown the first punch, not that it mattered. The fight had been an inevitability the moment their group walked into the bar.

Paige had just backed up into a corner at first, amazed that the X-Men were out and out trashing the bar. They weren't using their powers either. Even Jubilee was getting her licks in, using plenty of dirty tricks she'd picked up from Wolverine. She'd ended up in it when she saw a third guy getting ready to smash a chair leg over Gambit's head while he was busy with two others. She'd grabbed the chair leg, kicked the jackass and started having fun.

After the bar fight, they had celebrated with more drinks and more drinks and finally fluorescent orange cheese nachos from an all night convenience store on the drive back to the mansion.

Paige felt fairly certain she would never look at another nacho again without feeling nauseous.

When she could move without wanting to shoot herself, she wobbled her way downstairs to the kitchen. Gambit was perched on the counter, sipping coffee and looking absolutely untouched by the night's debauchery. Jubilee was sitting at the table opposite Wolverine, eyes half closed, clutching a glass of very fizzy water close. Wolverine was threatening Bobby over the sports page, while Storm massaged her temples and periodically glared at an apparently oblivious Gambit.

Rogue was frying sausages at the stove, which nearly sent Paige on another pilgrimage to the porcelain god. She still wore a set of flannel pajamas with little teddy bears all over them and her hair was up in a messy ponytail.

"You want some, gal?" she asked Paige.

One glance at the frying pan's contents was enough.

"Uh, no. I'm thinking of turning vegetarian."

"Alka Seltzer and aspirin're in the cupboard next to the glasses," Wolverine said.

Paige helped herself to both and found an empty seat at the table.

"Lordy," she muttered.

"'Ro, you want me to fix you some fruit or toast a bagel?" Gambit inquired.

"I want you and Logan to both die miserably," Storm muttered.

"Show a femme a good time and this is the thanks Gambit gets," Gambit said.

"Ungrateful," Wolverine agreed.

"I'll help bury 'em," Paige volunteered.

"Later," Jubilee said.

"That'll teach you all to go on a bender without me," Bobby said.

"Shut up, Robert," Storm told him. "I have a gravesite ready for you too."

"Come on, it was a joke," Bobby whined.

Storm touched her very short white hair. "This is not a joke."

"Ah, it looks good, 'Ro."

"It does, Stormy. Reminds me of that petite I met in Cairo," Gambit commented with a fond smile.

"Don't think you can charm me, Remy."

Paige looked back and forth between Storm, Gambit and Bobby. No one had mentioned Storm's shorn locks. She tended to do radical things with her hair periodically.

"I think I'll just go see what Scott's up too," Bobby said very casually.

"I haven't forgotten you, Robert Drake," Storm threatened.

Bobby ducked out of the kitchen.

"Ah wish he'd just grow up," Rogue commented with a sigh. She flipped her eggs over in the pan while leaning a hip against the kitchen counter.

"You'll be sorry when he does," Gambit said. He slipped off his perch and picked up the section of paper Bobby had abandoned on the table. The headline blared SPIDERMAN! MUTANT MENACE OR MUTATE HERO?

Paige dropped two Alka Seltzer tablets into her glass of water and watched the bubbles.

After that, Scott Summers insisted they all run through a Danger Room practice session, in some sadistic attempt at punishing Wolverine and Gambit for wrecking another bar and the rest of them for going along.

Consequently, she didn't check her messages until mid-afternoon.

Her sister Joelle's voice was the first thing she heard.

Sobbing.

"Paige, answer the phone.

Mama and Josh are dead.

Paige! Paige, where are ya!? I tried to call Sam and I can't get him either. Lordy, I'm scared, Paige.

The Trues came to the farm. They wanted to take away Josh and Jeb and Rebecca. We didn't even know the twins were mutants too.

Mama tried to stop them taking them. They're just babies.

Paige … Paige? Oh damn it.

The Trues hit Mama and Josh just went crazy. They shot him. They shot him right in front of all of us and Mama run back and got Daddy's old shotgun.

Mama shot two of them, Paige. She told me to take Becky and Jeb and Elizabeth and go out the back. I heard the shotgun. Then they started shooting back and we just ran.

Paige, please pick up. I don't what to do or where to go.

Damn. There's one of their trucks coming down the road. I got to go, I know they're looking for us. I'll try to call you or Sam again later."

Paige Guthrie kept the message machine tape for years. No one ever found out what happened to the other Guthries. It was the last time she heard her sister's voice and the last time she believed in Xavier's dream.

Yield

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:02:59 GMT

Chapter 20: The Sea of Faith

AD 2005, March 11-16
Westchester
Xavier's Institute of Higher Learning

The mansion rec room had been invaded and occupied. The women were in control. The ladies of the mansion had commandeered the rec room for the evening, driving out their mates, dates, and assorted at loose ends males by dint of telekinesis and the dread threat of chick flicks. They had taken over, armed with junk food, chocolate and booze.

Domino insisted on the booze.

The debris of a long, enjoyable evening were spread around, empty plates and glasses, bottles and bags of snack foods. The kitchen had been denuded as surely as if a cloud of locusts had descended on it. The big plasma TV was playing Moulin Rouge, volume turned down. The stereo was playing Bonnie Raitt and had just hit Something to Talk About.

It seemed like the perfect segue.

"You know, putting Gambit and Shatterstar on the same team is almost too much of a good thing," Dani remarked.

A pillow was thrown at her.

"They're both gorgeous and you all know it. Six foot three of strawberry blond gladiator from an alien dimension, innocent as a baby — "

"Shatterstar's not innocent," Domino muttered. "He's oblivious. Not the same thing."

" — Six foot two of the resident X-Men sex god himself, with those hands and that mouth and that ass … Honestly, Gambit may have the best ass ever, " Dani went on, laughing almost too hard to get the words out.

"And that's unfair how?" from Jubilee.

"Oh, you wouldn't complain, would you?" Tabitha groused. "You get to look at them all of the time, you're on Black Team." She grimaced. "Though I suppose having Marrow on the team evens things out."

"You are such a bitch, Tabby."

"That was uncalled for, Tabitha," Storm snapped.

"Besides, Sarah's sort of pretty if she remembers and keeps the bone growth on her face under control," Jubilee said and added maliciously, "At least she can do something about her face, unlike you."

"Oooh, ye've been hit, me girl," Siryn sniped. The Irishwoman was one of the few completely sober people in the room. She sipped on a cola instead and figured she'd have some good blackmail material by morning. She wouldn't be hung over and praying to the porcelain god either. One of the good points of being a reformed alcoholic was knowing the crap she wasn't missing.

Tabitha flipped them both off and reached for another beer.

"So, we all know 'Star's with Ric," Paige said. She'd curled up with her legs underneath on the main couch. A bowl of caramel corn sat on her lap. Any hands that strayed too close were swatted. Hard. Storm wasn't sure, but she thought the girl had growled once or twice. "All the really good looking guys are gay or jerks."

"Or both," Cecelia added. General laughter followed her sally.

"Who are we talking about now?" Dani asked.

"Bobby, of course."

"Mean, Cece, very mean," Tabitha said, smiling.

"Are we going to gossip about the men?" Psylocke asked.

"Of course, that's why we chased them away, sugar," Rogue declared. She had taken over the rug directly in front of the TV. She'd also wanted to play Gone With the Wind but been firmly voted down by the rest of the women. At least Ewan McGregor had a cleft chin too.

"So, you and Gambit are quits. Give us the goods. Is he as good in bed as he looks?" Lorna asked with a gleam in her eyes.

Rogue flushed red, but grinned and sat up. She just nodded.

"Did you two really do it in a cave in Antarctica?" came from Jubilee.

"Oh Bright Lady," Storm murmured. "Jubilee! Some decorum, please."

She loved her unofficial brother and dearest friend, but the man was like a fox in a henhouse when it came to women. Not just the women either, she acknowledged. When his control went slipshod, that charm snaked out and snagged anyone, male or female, drawing eye and hand and want, all that fey beauty begging to be touched, the wildness in him calling to the wildness in them all. Insouciant and amoral as a cat, promising everything with every graceful movement, but never quite within reach — always that space of aloofness in him except in the arms of another body, lost in give and take, skin on skin, seducing himself as surely as any other.

Why, by the Goddess, had a man so in need of connection and sensation given his heart to Rogue? Because some part of him knew she could never return what he offered so freely? There was a part of Gambit that wanted to punish himself for his self-perceived sins, that none of them had seen or understood originally, that must have drawn him to Rogue from the beginning. He loved danger like a woman, wanton and reckless as only someone who had never really had anything real to lose, not even himself, and Rogue promised to destroy him, was a sweet poison, another drug to lift him up and sink him down into the depths he thought he deserved. It was Rogue's very nature to take, more a thief than Gambit would ever be; too empty to ever be filled, even by one so carelessly generous in his affection and devotion as Gambit.

Yet he could lie in Storm's bed, under the skylights of her attic greenhouse, both of them stripped, long limbs wrapped in her arms to ward away the demons of his dreams, his every touch utterly chaste. All that he would accept from her, that touch that he needed; a gift of trust that he let Storm see just how much he needed, needed affection, acceptance, needed love that had never been offered without caveat in his life, not in a childhood that wasn't, not by clan, kin or Guild. He looked for it and found only a shadow of affection in the lust he could incite, but took even that for comfort, in the arms of an army of lovers, giving pleasure because it was his nature, it was what he'd learned to offer, believing no one could value the brittle damaged soul beneath the fallen angel's form.

He'd offered himself, heart and soul, to Rogue though; love not sex, emotion not sensation, he'd broken all his own rules, opened his defenses. All of him hadn't been enough for Rogue. For that Storm would never forgive her.

Rogue had never valued what Gambit offered at such cost to himself; never understood that he was prodigal with his body but never his heart. Storm had never, in her deepest self, forgiven the girl for scorning what she herself treasured, the innocent soul hidden in the charmer's armor. That oblivious disdain more damning than any attempted murder, not that Storm had forgotten that either.

It festered, that hypocrisy. Rogue had no place judging anyone.

So Storm found herself defending him all too often, when no one else had; despite his very real crimes and darkness, because he wasn't her lover nor ever had been, but always, always her dearest friend and more beloved for that.

It didn't please Storm that now that they had finally parted, Rogue felt free to speak of Gambit as though he were a belonging she had used and thrown away. Jubilee's interest was untainted, embarrassing but not unkind. She did not think Rogue's answer would be so.

Jubilee just giggled and waved her hand at Storm. "Come on, Rogue. Give."

Rogue shook her head. "Jubilee, it was Antarctica. In a cave. We were chained up. And there were other folks in there with us. We kissed. That was all."

"And the next day you let that fake Erik the Red put my brother on trial as though you had never committed a crime yourself; elected yourself judge, jury and executioner and left Gambit, the man you had said you loved, to die," Storm snapped.

"Well, I didn't see you rushing off to find him after you found out he'd been part of Sinister's killing all of your precious Morlocks," Rogue replied with a mulish look. Storm had always suspected Rogue of being sorrier for the way people looked at her afterward than for what she'd done to Gambit. She still insisted it was his memories, his self-loathing and desire to die that had made her leave him alone on an ice shelf outside a self-destructing citadel. He had never contradicted her.

Yet if he had really wanted to die, surely he would have? Gambit had survived that fiercely unforgiving environment against all odds, escaped when it would have been much easier to give up. He'd had to fight to live. He might not care if he lived or died in battle, but he had a survivor's drive that had never faltered.

Rogue lied.

Storm raised her chin. "I wasn't aware he was in need, because you said you left him alive and I assumed that you had done that somewhere he had chance to get out alive."

"And he did, didn't he?"

"Storm, Rogue, stop it," Jean said.

"No, let them go on," Domino told her. "Some of us never have heard the whole story."

"If they go after each other, the repairs to the mansion are coming out of your pocket," Jean replied.

Domino laughed and both quarreling women turned to glare at her.

"You don't know?" Rogue asked.

Domino shrugged. "I've heard bits and pieces."

"He worked for Sinister."

Domino raised an eyebrow.

"Imagine that."

"That ain't bad enough for ya? He led the Marauders into the Morlock Tunnels. The whole massacre was his fault," Rogue said bitterly.

"You're saying Sabretooth and the rest of them wouldn't have been there without Gambit?"

"He recruited them! He admitted it!" Rogue was growing shrill.

"No one else could have done that job, is that it?" Domino was not impressed with Rogue. She could name a dozen mercs and assassins who could have recruited a crew of killers for any sort of wet work and not one of them would have lost an hour's sleep over it. Considering who her foster mother was, Rogue could have done it herself, and might have if she hadn't already turned to the X-Men to help her deal with stealing Carol Danvers powers and personality. "How terrible of him that he made you fall in love with him and turned about to have a less than pristine past."

Rogue glared at her and Storm, who usually found Domino barely tolerable, gave her a friendly nod.

"Hah, well, I'm over him now."

Everyone helped themselves to more drinks and snacks.

"So, like, you haven't answered the big question," Jubilee persisted. "When did you and how was it?"

Rogue brushed her white forelock back and said quickly, "Back when he was working for New Son and had his powers jacked high and when the High Evolutionary turned everyone's powers off. And I touched Belladonna one time and got her memories of their first time." Her lips quirked. "I gotta say, on a scale of one to ten, in bed, Remy's a ten, maybe even an eleven. Just the rest of the time he's a snake slithering bastard."

"Like you've got a lot of experience to compare him with," Lorna said.

Rogue grimaced. "You all act like I was a virgin or something."

"You weren't?" Emma said.

"Oh, please. The Savage Land, Magnus, you think I didn't jump at the chance? And there was poor Joe and Piotr later."

"It's just you're always whining about not being able to control your powers or touch anyone." Emma sniffed disdainfully. She'd mastered her own powers by herself. "Though you do dress like a slut."

"Especially those Daisy Dukes she used to tease Gambit with," Jubilee piped up.

"I do not," Rogue drawled, Mississippi accent thick as mud. " You dress like a cross between a dominatrix and a Playboy Bunny, Emma."

Emma just laughed. "So?"

"You really like showing that much skin or are you just distracting the boys?"

"Both. Ask Elizabeth."

Betsy smiled slowly.

"Bodies are just tools, Rogue."

"I suppose that explains the old buttfloss costume."

"Excuse me, Madame Storm, but haven't you sported a few questionable outfits?"

"Ladies, ladies," Jean tried to pacify them.

"No one's forgotten that mask and miniskirt thing you used to wear, Jean," Betsy responded.

Jean shrugged. "I was a teenager. Besides it was still way better than that shower cap thing Charles designed for all of us to wear originally."

"Goddess, those costumes were awful," Storm agreed. "Charles should never be allowed to design anything but machinery."

"Skintight blue with big yellow 'shoot me here' Xs on the chest spandex," Cecelia cackled. "Geeks. How did he get those boys to wear those horrid things? They looked like great big yellow man-panties."

Jean shrieked and fell over on the couch laughing. "Oh, God, God, please say that to Logan. Please."

"Hey, maybe Chuck really had an endorsement deal going with Depends."

They were all laughing now. Jean clutched at her ribs. It didn't help when Jubilee said, "I always thought that's what they were. You know, for those times when you're facing off against old Poccy Lips or Galactus or an armada of War Skrulls and you just don't have time to change your pants?"

"Eeeeee!"

"Please, no more, Jubilee," Lorna gasped. "I'm never going to be able to look at Wolverine or Cyclops the same way again."

"I'm surprised you haven't burnt all the pictures from that era," Domino said.

"I've tried. So have Scott and Warren. The Professor has negatives somewhere."

"Well, I don't think any of ya look worse than Jubilee did in that awful yellow jacket of hers," Paige said.

Jubilee, clad in a red tank top and blue jeans, crunched a potato chip and shrugged. These days she wore a black uniform with dark blue stripes running down the arms and torso and legs. Black Team's gear and uniforms and armor were all geared for covert ops, including chameleon tuned image-inducers woven into the Shi'ar fabrics that blended them into any background.

When she'd swallowed, she admitted, "Pink and yellow and blue was pretty bad. In my defense, I was twelve and my fashion sense had been formed out of what I could shoplift. But it was a bad fashion statement."

"More like fashion felony," Monet commented.

"Yet, amazingly, I still looked good."

"You have been hanging with Gambit too much," Rogue laughed. "That sounded just like him. Throw him in the lake and he'd tell you he'd just been meaning to take a swim and cool off."

Storm smiled. That was true enough.

"Gambit used to wear pink — "

"Fuchsia!" Storm, Betsy, Jean and Rogue chorused and fell over laughing again.

Domino looked at them and shook her head. She poured herself another vodka and met Emma's equally amused gaze.

"Lightweights."

"Oooh, look, Christian's singing with Satine," Lorna pointed out.

Jubilee scrambled around and found the remote, switching off the stereo and turning off the TV mute.

"That's so romantic," Rogue said dreamily. "He loved her even after she died."

"Oh, for the love of God," Domino muttered.

"You'd know about that wouldn't you, Jean?" Siryn said.

Domino slapped the back of her head.

Jean just smiled and sighed, shaking her head, long red hair falling forward, loose and heavy over her faded Xavier's sweatshirt. Storm raised a pale eyebrow but said nothing. Domino had been den mother — Goddess help her — to X-Force for long enough to have the privilege. Siryn didn't seem to resent it anyway.

Jubilee wouldn't be deterred.

"So, we have confirmation that Remy's heterosexual and good. Let's talk about the rest of the guys."

Tabitha raised her hand and waved it. "I can give you all a report on Sam and 'Berto and Dom's got the goods on Cable."

"I'm not going to get up and gag you, Tabitha," Domino drawled. She lifted her leg and pulled a small gun out of her boot top. "I'll just shoot you."

"You wouldn't," Paige said.

"Sure'n she would," Siryn said. "There's even a doctor here."

"That's right," Domino said.

Cecelia waved her hands back and forth. "I am officially off duty. Any blood spilled will be Hank's problem tonight."

"Do we actually know about all of the guys, as Jubilee put it?" Monet speculated. She seemed undisturbed by Domino's gun waving.

Betsy looked around the room at the gathered women. "Hmn. Possibly." She unfolded herself from the window seat and poured the last of the wine into her glass.

"So, spill it, Betts," Rogue said. "I did."

Betsy shrugged gracefully. "Warren is talented but arrogant. A solid seven using Rogue's rather tasteless standard — unless you're flying."

"He really does do it in the air?" Jubilee goggled. Her eyes glazed as she tried to imagine the details.

"Rather like an eagle. It's … exhilarating."

"I always thought those wings were sexy," Dani commented.

"Oh, God," Rogue choked. "What if he gets carried away?"

"Apparently flying is fairly autonomic for him."

"So, if it was good, why'd you two break up?"

Betsy sipped her wine before answering. "I dislike being treated like an accessory, something pretty to walk into a room on his arm and be shown off. You can't imagine how many business dinners Warren took me to where I was expected to remain silent and telepathically pick his associates and rivals' brains."

Jean frowned at that. "Warren expected you to do that? That's totally against everything the Professor has taught us about telepathic ethics."

Emma widened her eyes dramatically. "I have been such a bad, bad girl."

"We all knew that, Frosty," Jubilee snickered.

"I found it more insulting that he never once wanted to hear my opinions."

"So you moved on to Neal," Paige said.

"No, Paige," Betsy corrected her, "I broke up with Warren. My relationship with Neal came later."

"And how is Neal?" Emma asked.

"Lovely, sweet, and devoted," Betsy replied.

"In bed."

"As I said."

"Come on, Betts," Jubilee whined. "We want details."

"I will only say that he comes from the same country as the Kama Sutra. "

"Who's next on the chopping block?" Rogue asked looking around. "Jean? How is Scott?"

"Exactly like Betsy's description of Neal, only he doesn't need the Kama Sutra, " Jean replied promptly.

Domino laughed in delight. The others joined in. They hadn't expected Jean to be even that forthcoming, not because she was a prude, but out of respect for her husband's natural reticence.

"And moving on," Jubilee said, holding up a finger that wavered from woman to woman, "we come to," the finger hesitated then steadied, "Lorna 'I'm not really dumb enough to marry a Summers' Dane. How does little brother compare, Ms. Dane?"

Lorna snorted rum and coke, choked and cursed.

"Damn, Jubilee," Paige said.

When she'd recovered, Lorna glared at Jubilee. "How did you know?"

"Know what?" Jean asked.

"Check out her hands," Jubilee said.

Reluctantly, Lorna held up her hand, displaying the pale thin band where she'd recently removed her engagement ring.

"I'm sorry, Lorna," Jean said. "But congratulations, you and Alex must be shielding really well. No one had a clue you were having problems."

"Again," muttered Lorna. She shrugged and slumped deeper into her end of the couch, dabbing at the spots on her rust-colored sweater. "Shit. Alex is such an asshole. He needs to stop trying to be Scott. So, it all blew up on the flight back from today's mission. I ended up offering to magnetically shove the ring up his ass along with his head."

"Oooh, nice," Domino commented.

"Yeah, well, your demented other half was there too, muttering in Askani. Men with metal arms should not piss off women with magnetic powers. How the hell do you stand that enormous ego?"

"I usually ignore him."

"Good. That's what I did. You know what you were saying earlier, Betsy, about wishing Warren would just ask for your opinion? That's Alex's problem. He is so busy being White Team leader, he forgets I've been doing this as long as he has. Today he and Cable spent forty-five fucking minutes trying to figure out how to do a job with teke and plasma that I did in five with my powers. And he was pissed at me for doing it." Lorna picked up the last of her rum and coke and swallowed it. "Cable too and, Dom, he is really hard to ignore."

"True. When he really ticks me off I usually shoot him."

"You know, I believe that," Dani said.

"He throws up a TK shield, but he gets the idea I'm through putting up with his shit and shuts up. Usually, his brain kicks in about then."

"Well, Lorna, now's the time to tell us about dear Havok," Emma remarked in the quiet that followed. "Tell us he's small, he's boring, he's fast. Run him down to the ground."

"Well, he's — "

"Knock-knock, frauleins, " Nightcrawler caroled, ducking his blue face around the doorway.

"Kurt, you're taking your furry blue life in your three fingered hands, coming in here tonight," Rogue told him.

Two more heads peeked around.

"There were great gales of mirth and merriment echoing down the halls, thus we thought it expedient to inquire of you the basis of this laughterious lightheartedness," Beast said. He was upside down, clinging to the doorjamb. The position threatened to send his delicate gold-rimmed glasses tumbling off his face.

"Hah," said Bobby. "The truth is the shrieks and giggling have everyone else in the house paranoid."

"Perhaps with good reason, Robert," Beast said, looking around the women sprawled on the furniture and the floor, along with the empty bottles and boxes of chocolate. "I sense we may have stumbled upon a secret gathering of Maenad-like excesses."

"Remember what happened to the poor saps that got in the Maenads' way, Hank?" Jubilee warned.

"Be still my heart," Emma exclaimed, "you actually remembered something from school, Jubilee."

"Clue me in?" Bobby asked.

"I believe they were torn limb from limb, mein freund, " Kurt declared. His yellow eyes widened. " Auf Wiedersehen! " He teleported away with a sharp *bamf* leaving behind his typical stink of sulfur.

"Yikes," Bobby yelped. His head disappeared.

Beast gazed at the women serenely. "You wouldn't harm such a bodaciously brazen bouncing and brilliant blue beast such as myself, would you, dear ladies?"

"Depends on hour fast you can run," Jean told him, green eyes twinkling.

"Then, as my cowardly compatriots have already decamped, I bid you adieu, " he called, flipping down to his feet and leaving them.

"Now where were we?" Emma said wickedly. "Oh, yes, Alex and his attributes … or lack there of. Tell me, dear, did you ever introduce him to anything beyond the missionary position?"

The wild hoots of laughter and increasingly imaginative insults echoed down the mansion's halls.

The War Room was geared to hold up to three different field teams at once and sometimes saw four. Any larger gathering and they configured the Danger Room into a meeting hall. Banks of monitors tuned to everything from cable news to pirated surveillance satellite feeds and displays from Beast's lab, the mansion security system, and a rugby match being played in New Delhi. A balcony projected along three sides of the room, equipped with operator stations. The main level held a massive black conference table with a holodisplay in the center.

Recessed lights lit built in workstations at each place at the table. Except for the non-stop flicker of bluish monitor light, the room remained ominously dark, filled with shadows, cold to the eye and the skin. Black metal and stainless steel dominated, while the shadows clung to curves and angles never designed by human minds where Shi'ar tech mated with cutting edge equipment scavenged from the far ends of the earth or custom designed by the likes of Forge, McCoy, Richards and a round handful of others, including Magneto himself.

The room almost echoed late at night. The eight men gathered there had taken places spaced around the table that left them all isolated.

Banshee kept an eye on a monitor high in the bank behind Cable and Sam, desultorily watching a rerun of T2. "D'ye think they'll make it back alive?"

"Not if them women get hold of 'em," Gambit said moodily.

He'd propped his old hightops on the conference table and tipped his chair back so precariously everyone was waiting for it to go over. Instead of a cigarette, he had a pen in his hand, absently spinning and walking it through his fingers. The restless fidgeting was typical of his energy mutation, constant movement necessary to burn off power build up, even three floors beneath the ground, because unlike Havok and Cyclops, he didn't convert from solar radiation. He was nocturnal by nature and inclination.

Wolverine grunted and nodded. "Damn hen parties can be dangerous."

Cable snorted.

"Logan's right," Havok said. "Lorna's probably telling them I'm scum or something right now."

"What did you do this time, Alex?" Scott asked.

"I? I didn't do a damn thing. She'd the one that went off half-cocked, then threw a hissy fit when I tried to explain why she should have waited for us to put together a plan."

"Mistake, mon ami, big mistake."

"Anyway, she gave me my walking papers."

"My sympathies," Forge said.

"Feh," Gambit muttered.

Banshee cocking his head to watch one of the stunt sequences on the monitor caught his attention. He lifted his head and watched too. Linda Hamilton picked the locks of her restraints with a paperclip.

"Should have never made that third movie," he said.

"Why's that, Cajun?" Wolverine asked.

They were waiting for Kurt, Hank and Bobby to return, theoretically with the pizzas they'd ordered half an hour ago.

Gambit nodded toward the screen. "'S like that Askani saying Cable always quotin'."

Cable's left eye flared brighter and he looked interested. "'What is, is?'"

"Mais yeah, that one. Figure wit' all the time travelin' and dimensions all of us done, there's only one way to hang on, and that's like the woman in the movie says. 'No fate but what you make.'"

"Sounds Askani ," Cable admitted, looking at the screen with new respect.

" T3 just fuck that all up, make it seem like no matter what anyone do, there only one way the future goin' to go."

"Flonq that."

"Sonova — I hate agreeing Cable," Wolverine griped.

"Thanks, Gambit, you just ruined that movie for me forever," Scott added.

"Live to serve, me."

Gambit flipped the pen into the air and caught it blindly. The next time it went into the air it glowed pink only to go dark as he caught and decharged it in the next instant.

"Would you cease and desist, Gambit?" Beast said, entering the War Room with six pizza boxes piled on each other. Behind him Nighcrawler and Iceman carried a case of beer and a box of assorted sodas.

"It's like being in the room with a twelve year that juggles hand grenades," Scott muttered.

"Don't you love being boss of bosses?" Alex remarked.

"Herding cats wearing a blindfold would be easier."

"Meow, meow," Gambit said immediately, long mouth creasing into a self-satisfied smile.

"So are we going to talk about what the Pentagon has planned for all of us?" Sam asked.

Beast set the pizza boxes down. One immediately floated across the wide table to Cable as he used his TK to take possession of his first.

"Swine," Beast said.

"Henrí," Gambit said, a low warning in his voice, eyes sparking. "That better not be my pepper and andouille wit' mushrooms Summers just snatched."

"Indeed not, my Cajun compadre." Beast sorted out a box and frisbeed it toward Gambit with a chortle. "Here it is."

Gambit vaulted out his chair to catch it, cursing in mixture of Creole and Joual that he'd picked up with frightful glee from Northstar. The two men had finally bonded over imaginative obscenities, glorying in their ability to insult Cyclops in more languages than he knew. The chair fell over backwards with a clatter.

Gambit checked the pizza, glared at Beast again and righted his chair.

"You do that to mine and I'm going to shave ya bald, McCoy," Wolverine told him. Snikt went one set of claws in demonstration.

Scott watched as the rest of the pizzas were sorted and distributed on flimsy paper plates and accepted a beer gratefully. The teasing and threats of bodily harm were always the same and let them distract themselves from darker matters.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he muttered to himself as Bobby froze the last slice of pepperoni perfection solid when Alex wrested it away from him.

"You do not appreciate us," Kurt said mournfully. He was unsuccessfully trying to untangle a string of melted cheese out of his deep indigo fur. The cheese threatened to perform an impromptu wax job. "Schiesse."

Cable had finished his and casually wafted all the empty boxes and paper plates to the garbage can placed conveniently by the War Room door. This wasn't the first meal the X-Men had consumed there.

Scott stood and flattened his palms against the tabletop, leaning forward. Amazingly fast, the ten men in the room bent their attention toward him, falling silent and expectant.

"We're all here to talk about what Forge decoded off the hard drive copy Black Team brought back from the Pentagon," he stated.

"Rogue and Storm should be here if this a meeting of team leaders," Sam said.

"Ya want to go get either of 'em, kid?" Wolverine asked.

Sam gave him a dirty look. "Just because I come from Kentucky don't mean I just rolled off the turnip truck. I got sisters."

Chuckles were the response to that declaration.

"We aren't making any decisions tonight," Scott said. "The Professor has called a meeting for tomorrow afternoon. I thought it might be wise to familiarize ourselves with what he wants to talk about though, since for once we are all here. Banshee can brief Storm in on what we're going to talk about."

"Ah, how perspicacious of you, Fearless Leader," Beast commented.

"Hank — "

"This is serious. We all know. Allow us our moments of foolishness, Scott," Beast said. "They make this life bearable."

"Rogue hasn't got a deputy here," Alex pointed out.

"I'll take care of it," Wolverine offered. He raised an eyebrow at Gambit. "'Less you want to, Gumbo."

"She don' listen to this Cajun, y' know that."

"What was on the hard drive?" Bobby asked. Not technically a team leader any more than Wolverine and Cable or Domino were, but he'd run things from time to time since O:ZT and had been around from the beginning. Nightcrawler and Banshee weren't currently heading a field teams either, but they had and might need to again.

"Bad shit," Gambit said and Scott had to agree.

"Operation: Clean Sweep, we've already begun receiving reports on. It started on the sixth," he told them.

Sam looked at the read-out on his table monitor. His still youthful face set. "They're rounding up everyone that registered." He looked up. "Do we know what they're doing with these folks?"

"It can't be good," Alex remarked.

"News flash, Alex, no one has to break in to the Pentagon to find out good things," Bobby said.

Alex rolled his eyes.

"They're arresting them for being mutants, that's what it amounts to," Forge said. The cybernetic eye he'd designed for himself after the raid on Fall's Edge flashed. He'd decrypted and copied the contents to all the field leaders at the same time he sent the contents to the Professor. The possibility that Professor Xavier might censor anything didn't exist.

Professor X could be secretive sometimes. Always with the stated intention of protecting his students. Those students weren't children anymore and preferred making their own decisions based on all the facts. Scott had quietly asked Forge to make sure they got all the data. Another reason he'd rounded up the X-Men leaders and got them in one place to talk. He wanted — he hoped — to forestall the divisions that were festering just under the surface before the Professor faced them all with the latest news.

Everyone would want do something. Scott felt the same way. But he feared that the Professor would council patience and considered responses. Patience and consideration had their place, but even the smartest of the X-Men were hotheaded when it came to seeing something wrong and not immediately trying to stop it.

"Yes," he agreed with Forge, "that is what it amounts to, no matter what spin they're putting on it. It's all going on under the umbrella of the new Federal Bureau of Security.

Cable tapped his monitor. "This is what disturbs me most. Operation Midden."

The others scrolled through their reports until they found the pertinent reports.

Banshee cursed softly in Gaelic as he read. Once his voice rose, threatening to pierce eardrums with the sonic scream he used as a weapon.

"Sean!" Scott yelled. The painful sound cut off.

"Sorry, Scott."

"Watch it, Cassidy," Wolverine snapped.

"Sorry."

"Containment facilities," Gambit muttered. His fine brows were drawn together in a dark scowl. "Nice words for something that ain't so nice, neh?"

"Sonovabitch!" Wolverine exclaimed. "Those bastards are setting up fucking concentration camps."

"According to this report, they already have," Forge said.

"Motherless flonquing bastards," Cable muttered. He coughed painfully hard suddenly, bracing himself against the table until he'd recovered.

"Nasty cough, Nate," Wolverine observed with the superiority of those whose healing factor meant they never got sick. Or even suffered from the beatings their sick comrades wished to heap on them.

Cable hacked through another spasm of coughs.

"Serves you right for hogging that whole Chicago-style," Bobby said unsympathetically. "You're probably choking on it."

Cable sent, ~Flonq you, Drake.~

~You are so not my type. Besides, I changed your diapers.~

~growl~

"Are you okay?" Scott asked.

Cable nodded and grabbed his beer, swallowing twice to clean out his throat.

Concern between Nathan and Scott always turned awkward. The paradoxes of time travel had resulted in a son who was older than his father. Throw in the abandonment issues of sending a child away — even to save his life — the mess with Cable's mother Maddie Pryor turning out to be Sinister's clone of Jean, her transformation into the Goblyn Queen and attempt to sacrifice baby Nathan to merge a Hell dimension with Earth's and all their philosophical differences and it got worse. Much worse. There were reasons the X-Men joked about the Summers family. Despite it all, Scott and Nathan did care for each other. They were just abysmal at displaying it.

"Oath, I'm fine," Cable replied hoarsely. "It's just something I picked up. Can't seem to flonquing shake it."

"Come down to the med lab after this and I'll give you something for the cough," Beast told him. He considered Cable for a moment. "One of the mutants Red Team picked up in San Diego had a similar cough. You were with them for the mission, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Hmn. Probably why it's so persistent. The strain you've picked up is already adapted for a mutant physiology. Was the mutant in question another psi?"

"Beta teke."

"Back to the damned Mucons," Alex said. "What are we going to do about them? It really sounds like Wolverine's right. They are concentration camps. The government has spent billions building them and keeping them secret."

"What do ya mean what're we going to do?" Sam snapped. "We're going to blow 'em up, get all of them people out. You're talking like there's some question!"

"I think — " cough, " — Alex is more familiar with the way Professor Xavier runs the X-Men than you are Sam," Cable said.

"He means your X-Force roots are showing, Sammy," Bobby added. "When in doubt, blow things up."

"Not that bad an idea," Gambit said. He sat up and spoke seriously, the accent almost disappearing. "The problem is where do the people that've already been sent there go afterwards? You read all of these reports, you might notice BuSec has been authorized to and has confiscated the assets of any mutant arrested or detained. Businesses, bank accounts, even their homes, that's all gone, Sam."

Scott nodded. "This is complicated. We've been running missions to stop the NMLF and the worst radicals of Humans First and the FOH when they've targeted mutant enclaves for the last four months, since merging our groups. We don't have the resources to care for people in the numbers that these Mucons are already holding."

Forge ran a calculation. "According to their own plans, they intended to pick up at least fifty thousand people the first night of Operation: Clean Sweep."

"A thousand people in every state of the union," Beast said.

"A drop in the bucket out of the population of the United States or even the fraction of that population composed of mutants," Forge went on. He held up the finger of his cybernetic hand. Between that and his leg and now his eye, the cyborged mutant was nearly more mechanical than organic, but none of it was as much a part of him as the techno-organic virus that composed Cable's arm. "But, they've been continuing that schedule since the sixth."

"Two hundred fifty thousand people …?"

Forge clenched his fist. "According to BuSec records, slightly less than half a million people registered, which we know is far from the total mutant population in the US, Bobby."

"Shit."

"So, you're suggesting … what, Forge?" Cable said in a hard, low voice. "We just ignore this information? Maybe these poor saps are on their own, because hey, they were stupid enough to obey the law and register as mutants? Survival of the fittest and they've proved they aren't fit?"

"Far be it for any of us to criticize you, Nathan, but I personally take exception to being compared to En Sabah Nur," Beast remarked angrily. "Your methods bear a greater resemblance to Apocalypse's than ours ever have."

"You forget, McCoy. Apocalypse won in my time. Clan Chosen fell. The Askani were wiped out. That's why I had to return to this here/now from the there/then to stop him before he could rise to power."

"Stop it," Scott snapped. "Enough."

"We're not accomplishing anything," Cable dismissed. He sat back and crossed his arms.

Scott rubbed his forehead, cursing the visor he could never do without, wishing he could just rub his eyes for once. If they broke the prisoners out of a containment facility, where could they take them? How could they get them there, in the numbers they were talking about? His head throbbed.

"Beast," Gambit said, "you read this part, about Bioagent LB49873028? Any idea what that is?"

"I hadn't got that far, Remy. I shall peruse it in depth, of course."

"'Cause this says it's already been released in three population centers. Houston and Pittsburgh and Detroit."

"Are you thinking it may be a Legacy derivative?"

"No one in this here/now has the skill to manipulate Legacy. Stryfe made sure of that," Cable stated.

"Oh, yeah?" Bobby said. "He thought he made sure no one could cure it either and Hank did."

"Robert — "

Cable's eyes narrowed. "No, he made sure that the only way to synthesis a cure would be at the cost of at least one mutant's life. He wanted to make us murderers."

"Then he succeeded with you, didn't he?" Alex said scornfully.

"I already was. There are very few people in this room that can claim otherwise," Cable replied evenly. Unspoken but clear to everyone, he conveyed, particularly you, Havok.

Beast scrubbed at his face, combing massive, claw-tipped hands through his mane of blue fur. His ears pinned back, much like the feline he increasingly resembled as a secondary mutation had come into play.

"Stryfe ain't a problem no more," Wolverine said. "Neither's Legacy thanks to Piotr. Whatever blood we've spilt, no one made Piotr do what he did. You sure hell didn't, Hank."

Gambit spoke softly, his voice smoky and edged with something sharp and cold. The shadows limned his foxy, angular face into a devil's mask lit by the glow of his eyes. "Take it from someone that 'as done murder, that was there that night, Henrí, that you ain' no murderer. Ain' got that in you that I can read, mais non. The Russian'd been lookin' for the way out for a long time, I think."

Beast met his gaze and inclined his head. Thank you, my friend.

A brush of that empathy he'd kept hidden for so long, recognized now.

~warmth/acceptance/approval/liking~

"I suspect we are wise to investigate anything the present political administration would approve for exposure to the population at large, considering the context of the information cache this was extracted from and its fiat accompli presence in the cities Gambit already mentioned," Beast stated.

"Could we get that many people up to Canada, if we had to?" Sam asked. He'd obviously still been mulling over the dilemma of the containment facilities and people being sent there.

"Canadians wouldn't like it," Wolverine said. "Might send in Alpha Flight to stop us if we did and I still don't see how we'd do it. How many planes you figure it would take? Or trains or trucks? No matter what we did, they'd be sitting ducks and us with them."

"Then we need more firepower and we hit the bastards where it hurts, keep them so busy they can't be bothered trying to stop those folks getting away. 'Cause I ain't standing around ignoring what's happening to those people."

Cable nodded at Sam.

"Where do you suggest we get more firepower, Samuel?" Beast asked.

"Magneto."

It should have been unthinkable.

"Magneto," Scott repeated. Not, 'Are you out of your mind?'. None of the faces at the table were open. Banshee opened his mouth as though to speak, only to shake his head and remain silent. Forge looked thoughtful. Alex's face was a careful blank.

Bobby spoke, surprising Scott.

"It's what he always predicted, you know?"

"Unfortunately, Robert," Beast conceded.

"New Genosha has open immigration for mutants," Bobby went on. "The Canadian government might not object so much if the refugees were only passing through."

"Could be," Wolverine agreed.

Cable nodded.

"The Professor will never agree."

"Chuck's opinions ain't what we're talkin' about here, Cyke," Wolverine growled. "I'm the last man to give Mags the time of day, but Sam could probably talk him into taking these people. It's the people we're talkin' about that're important here."

Scott shoved his hand through his hair in frustration over the entire situation.

"I know, damn it."

He looked at Wolverine, stoic as stone, Gambit wearing his best poker face, Iceman uneasy but determined and Nightcrawler, who managed to look neutral while his tail flipped back and forth nervously.

"You all accept allying with Magneto?"

Careful looks were exchanged.

Gambit shrugged and answered in the heavy silence.

"Worked for worse, me. Ouai. Got no objections."

His garnet eyes rested on Wolverine.

"M'sieu Serval?"

"Best of a bad bargain," Wolverine growled. "Wouldn't like it, but like don't mean shit. I'd do it."

Beast nodded. "My feelings are the same."

Scott asked Banshee, "Sean?"

"Aye."

"I think I know how Sam and Nathan feel," they nodded, " so … Kurt, Forge, Alex? What do you say?"

" Ja. To save people, I would ally with Magneto," Kurt said. "Remember that Kitty and I were at the school when he took over as headmaster. He has never been evil in my eyes, only misguided."

"Maybe not so misguided or we wouldn't be talking about this, would we?" Alex asked. "I agree with the elf. If working with Magneto is what it takes, I can do that."

Forge sighed. "I don't think so."

Scott raised his eyebrows. Well, well.

"I think the one thing we can take with us from this discussion is that we must investigate these facilities and determine whether they are what we believe them to be," Scott said.

"Wit' out letting anyone know we there or we lose the advantage of knowing what we got from these reports, neh?" Gambit said.

"LeBeau is right," Cable acknowledged. "Black Team is the natural choice to reconnoiter. I'd like to suggest Domino and Wolverine and I replace Marrow, however."

"Non. Sarah stays," Gambit drawled. "Got no objections to you or Lady Luck coming along, though. Wolverine, either."

"Fine," Scott said. "I'm sure the Professor will agree."

"And if these Mucons are full of mutants?" Sam asked.

"We'll decide then."

He didn't reiterate what they all must realize, that the Professor simply wouldn't agree to call on Magneto to attack a government installation.

The quiet looks being exchanged told Scott decisions were being made that the Professor would have no control over.

He wasn't the most powerful telepath on the planet, despite the reputation that had grown up around him among the secret community of mutants who saw themselves as heroes and villains in the effort to shape their places in the world. He was powerful beyond most and had many more years of experience and skill to rely on. He wasn't above feeding the rumor, either.

He had taught many of the telepaths who might have outstripped him, Jean Grey, among them.

Quite simply he had never taught them all he knew.

There were times he felt ashamed of that. He hadn't deliberately crippled her, nothing so obvious as that. She could learn all that he knew. Given long enough, he thought she would. But he preferred matters as they were now.

He had enough trouble controlling the X-Men. There were so many of them now, all strong minded individuals and even the non-psis shielded against intrusion or manipulation. It was exhausting nudging them back to the path he had chosen for them, often against their instincts.

He did it only for their own good, of course. Personally, he found using his telepathy in such a manner distasteful. It was a necessary evil he resorted to only for the Dream.

The Dream sustained him and through him all of the X-Men. Someday, they would live in a world that no longer feared and hated them. All of their sacrifices would be worthwhile then. They would understand all that Charles had done and approve.

It had to be that way. Magnus couldn't be right.

If he was …

If he was … then Charles had become one of the monsters he fought. The choices he'd made became unforgivable.

Thinking about such things threatened his own determination too much. The reports and operational data that Gambit had returned with could not be accurate. It was simply not acceptable.

Charles considered seriously planting the suggestion in his students' minds that Gambit had altered the data, but dismissed it. Too much chance of outside reality contradicting the implanted thoughts, creating a paradox that would alert them to telepathic tampering. Gambit wouldn't remain with the X-Men through another round of blame and accusations. They couldn't really afford to lose the thief and his skills, not while Storm refused to ply her old trade and Shadowcat had defected.

They were talking about it now, down in the War Room.

Charles slid his mind past the shields he had taught most of them to create, using the openings he had shaped in those shields that would always let him in.

They were filled with anger. Harsh determination and regret dominated their thoughts, the thoughts of soldiers. He roamed through the minds of the men in the War Room, avoiding only Cable — whose raw psi talent outstripped Jean's and whose Askani training was foreign to him — and Gambit. Quite simply, if he had not seen and heard the man through the eyes of the others, Charles wouldn't have known he was in the War Room. On the Astral Plane, Gambit was a shimmer in the corner of the eye, invisible to a casual telepathic scan. Any probe that did find him found shields around his mind like dense, endless black walls, seamless and unwelcoming. Gambit allowed no one in his mind beyond the most superficial of links and would sense any probe immediately.

They were united in the decision to search for the truth of the mutant containment facilities. Charles grimaced and pressed his hands to his temples. It would tax him to rearrange their natural impulses and prove fruitless, he feared. When he spoke to the gathered X-Men teams tomorrow, many of those present would react even more strongly than these men had.

He would have to dissuade them from any rash actions. The scouting mission, that would be tolerated, but anything more would not be permissible. To turn to Magnus for aid, to admit that matters had come to such a state after so much work, no, he could not allow that.

Not at all.

continued in next post - The Sea of Faith [b]

Yield

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:29:08 GMT

19: Pale Kings And Princes Too

AD 2227, February 4
Hammer Bay
The Tower

It wasn't like Arlington in the States or the battleground cemeteries of Flanders. No fields of green, smoothly kept lawn, no marble stones, no simple crosses. Alistair had thought there would be something more like the memorials of old. Instead, the mutants of Genosha had placed their memorial to their dead directly in the center of Magda Square.

The Tower of the Dead, they called it.

It spiraled up and up into the sky, a helical spike of red veined black stone. Stairs twined up it to an unrailed platform at center of which was a hemispherical hollow. A great pillar of flame three men high shot up from within the smooth altar. When the wind rose high enough, the flame flared sidewise like a great banner, but it never flickered out. Upon each step was carved the name of one of the dead.

Alistair felt distinctly disrespectful setting his feet on those names and sick as he looked up at the breathtaking height of the tower. So very many steps led up it.

A voice seemed to whisper within his mind as he started up.

Remember us, all of us, all the dead, for this is all that remains of us.

Alistair started to read the chiseled name.

The image startled him, an ethereal ghost that hovered above the step as Alistair's foot touched it. She was huge eyed, a tiny child clutching a floppy eared toy, clearly not quite human. She seemed to stare from those solemn black eyes at him. The breath of voice in his mind returned.

~I was Nina.~

The astral engraving faded, to be followed by the next and the next and the next as Alistair trudged higher.

A white-haired soldier, one arm made of metal, with a star scarred over one eye. ~Cable. Nathan Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani'son Summers. La Belle Dame san smerci killed me.~ One eye flashed yellow fire as he balanced a massive gun on one shoulder and turned away, fading.

Some were so clear and real, they could have been alive; others were the faintest whisper of a voice, the mental memory of a perfume. Many were angry or sad, fierce, bitter, and wild. Most were names no one had ever known beyond their own lives, but the figures from history were recorded among them as equals.

~Just Rogue, sugar,~ breathed a beauty clad in green from head to toe, sporting a bomber jacket with the X-Men sigil on the shoulders, a wide streak of white through her mane of brown hair. Mischief and grief both shown in her bright green eyes. She looked solid enough to touch, the memories that contributed to the engram obviously strong and focused. ~I went from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants,~ she laughed there, ~ to the X-Men. I loved a man. I made mistakes. I ran out of time.~

~Sabretooth,~ growled a huge, clawed man with the yellow eyes of a predator and the reek of blood about him. ~First Denver saving the Cajun's pansy ass.~

Then a thin young man, too young to be any sort of soldier, but hard eyed.

~Neophyte the Acolyte.~

Within two more steps, a weeping, green-haired woman, clad in blue with an X sigil, black on red, over her breast held out her hands in entreaty.

~Lorna Dane was my name. They called me Polaris. I wasn't strong enough to stop them all at Denver. Forgive me.~

Alistair kept climbing, wincing as the faces seemed to become younger, yet harder, their words sometimes murmuring of where they died or how.

Karma. Warpath. The CanAm Highway Holding Action.

Tempo. The Humans First bombing of the New York Hellfire Club.

Husk. Joshua. Angelo Espinoza. A riot in Pittsburgh that killed thousands along with them.

Archangel.

Vindaloo. Pathway. Ghost Girl II. Persuasion. Avalanche. Died at Omaha.

Banshee and Siryn and Black Tom. The Cassidys, good and bad.

Locus. Wildcard. Gorgeous George. Elena Ivanova. Copycat. Garrison Kane.

Andrea and Andreas von Strucker. A pair of blonds, their hands twined together, clearly twin brother and sister. ~We were Fenris.~

Blockbuster. Nanya. Brian Braddock. Random.

Risque. Died killing the Human High Command at Pentagon Two. A bitter smile twisted her pretty face. ~It was worth it to take out those bastards.~

Nightcrawler.

Meltdown.

Radius. Sunspot. Rictor.

And on and on, until Alistair had tears streaming down his face. And he kept climbing, on and on, up and up, past the legions of the dead, and their whispers were a roar he could hardly bear.

When he set foot on the final step and looked around, he could see past Hammer Bay to the limits of Genosha it seemed. The island nation seemed laid at his feet. Looking around, he understood the metaphor of the stairs, the names beneath his feet. Genosha had climbed to this height, of security and civilization, on the backs and bones of its dead. To reach this place and see it was to know and acknowledge the sacrifice that had gone before. Those that died weren't just names in history books for the mutants of Genosha.

The past lived in Genosha. The Triune had lived when these dead lived, had known many of them. Generations had come and gone since the Gene Wars in the outside world, but for the Genoshans it remained as real and immediate as a dead friend.

Yield

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:25:17 GMT

18: Decussate

AD 2005, March 8
United States
Washington, DC

Robert Lord strode down the halls of the Pentagon confidently.

A pair of chic, European-styled glasses sat on Remy's straight nose. Those glasses concealed a sweet package deal — an image-inducer that gave his distinctive eyes the appearance of being a rather appealing but very normal brown and a constant connection to the computers on the Blackbird circling in a lazy holding pattern above DC, complete with heads-up display in one lens. The HUD showed him a schematic for the for the security and surveillance system in this part of the building.

The image inducer included a false retinal scan. Ten fingertips of Shi'ar artificially generated skin were bonded to his hands, giving him Robert Lord's matching prints. A flat black chip the size of a watch battery rested under the skin of his wrist, guaranteeing that a genescan would read him as nominal human — he stole it from a Hydra R&D lab just for this caper. He'd sell the reverse engineered plans on the blackmarket once he'd done with it.

He carried an exquisitely expensive, custom-made leather briefcase in his hand, Italian, matching his shoes and the slim belt round his narrow waist. The sage-gray suit was Italian too. They loved him in Milan; he could get all his clothes for free if he'd agree to model, but he'll leave the catwalks to Betsy. The chestnut leather was one shade lighter than his dyed hair.

The ID dangling from the handkerchief pocket of his beautifully tailored jacket said he was an agent of the Canadian government. He'd spent three days in Northstar's company to perfect his Quebec accent, picking up a couple of useful curses in Joual French and nearly coming to blows only once.

Northstar had also briefed him on Department H, the Canadian agency originally responsible for the Weapon X Program that had seen Wolverine's skeleton bonded with adamantium and false memories implanted in his mind before he escaped them. Northstar's old Canadian team Alpha Flight had worked for and tangled with the renegade department more than once. Remy had read the briefing files, of course, he always did his homework for a job, whether it was Guild work or for the X-Men, but talking with Jean-Paul had given him the sort of personal insight and details no file ever offered.

Robert Lord was in DC on behalf of Department H. He needed to know who he was supposed to be.

Remy smiled to himself.

This was what he lived for, walking right out on the edge of disaster and laughing. No one could imagine a mutant having the gall to walk in the front doors of the Pentagon.

No one sane, but he very possibly wasn't.

The only thing he regretted about this caper was the necessity of cutting his hair and dyeing it brown again.

Jean had walked in on him with his shirt off and his head in the laundry room sink, dropped her basket and hooted with laughter. She'd picked up the box of Brunette #5 and raised her eyebrows.

"Why?"

"Brown's a lot less memorable," he'd explained. She'd know, with that red-flame cloud of hair that was her signature.

"So why do it down here?"

"Always make a mess doing this, chere." He grinned. "Get this stuff all over my bathroom, on the towels, it looks like I was disposing of a body in there." He gestured to the extra deep, stainless steel laundry sink. "Easier to clean up here, non?"

She set her laundry on the washing machine. "Here, let me help."

"You need gloves, chere."

"Not me," she replied with a lilt in her voice. Then TK hands began working the chemicals through his hair. "Just close your eyes."

"You're awfully good at this," he'd commented. The things Jean could do with telekinesis. He'd sighed. He'd had a taste, for a couple of months, in Moscow. Scott was a lucky, lucky man. "Something the rest of us should know … Red?"

Jean giggled. "Nope. But I bet Emma has a standing appointment every week to hide her roots, with that platinum blonde look of hers."

"I've heard it's the real thing."

"And you haven't found out for yourself?"

"The woman's name is Frost," he'd replied, shuddering theatrically.

Not that he had anything against Emma, he thought as he made the turn to walk down another corridor — the place really was a maze — that would take him to his destination. He'd just had his fill of man-eaters years ago.

One more turn, two more doors, and he arrived at his supposed destination. The Army lieutenant doing a secretary's job recognized the name he gave and ushered him into the next office.

"Robert Lord," Remy introduced himself. He shook hands easily with the man who rose from his desk chair.

"Good to meet you, Mr. Lord, I'm Leland Peterson." He gestured to the chairs arranged to face his desk. "Have a seat."

"Thank you."

He set the briefcase by his feet and sat.

Typical of an interior Pentagon office, this one had no windows. There were overhead lights and Peterson had added his own desk lamp. A picture of Graydon Creed at his inauguration hung on the wall, along with an American flag and one with the white outlined pale blue star on a dark blue background of the FOH. Dark blue carpet, light blue walls, dark furniture.

Peterson resumed his own seat. He looked at Remy with frank interest. Remy kept his expression bland while studying Peterson in return. He was a fortyish man, with a receding hair line and an athlete's body beginning to soften, though he hadn't run to fat.

"So, what can I do for the Canadian government, Mr. Lord?"

Remy smiled slightly. He didn't try to use his charm to read or influence Peterson. There were assuredly monitors in the building tuned to any use of psionic energy. He been trained in the subtle arts of manipulation, deception, seduction and intimidation by the best, though. Psychology and kinesthetic were necessary tools for the Thieves' Guild. He infused his smile with just an edge of ruthlessness, leaned his body forward just enough to signal a likeness with Peterson in their aims and beliefs.

"Department H, actually," he said.

Peterson's eyebrows shot up, but he nodded.

"You're familiar with our work?"

"Canada's response to the Super Soldier program," Peterson replied.

Remy looked sly, letting Peterson see that.

"In part."

"And that part would be?"

Remy gestured to his briefcase. "May I?"

Peterson nodded, looking curious.

Remy set the case of his knees and flipped it open, withdrawing a file in a red folder. It was an actual Department H proposal that had gone 'astray' on its course to the States. As he picked it up, his fingers brushed the silver barrel of a fountain pen, casually tapping the clip. It began pumping out a colorless, odorless trinary gas that according to Forge would bypass the biotox and chemical sensors. The gas catalyzed within the body, while its elements were each under the parts per million threshold the sensors were geared to screen.

The filters in his nose itched. Hank had injected him with an immunizing agent, but he felt better with the nose filters in place, even if they were irritating.

He handed Peterson the file.

"The details of our proposal are inside," he said. "Please, take a moment to read it and I'll answer any questions you have afterward."

Basically Department H was offering to take any 'dangerous' mutants off the United States' hands. The revived Weapon X program needed new subjects. Remy didn't think the present administration would accept the offer; they were too afraid of mutants to want their next door neighbor to have access to them.

He watched Peterson leaf through the folder and hid a wince of sympathy as the man shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Beads of sweat formed on Peterson's upper lip. He swallowed hard. The gas was getting to him. He looked a little green.

"Are you all right?" Remy asked, playing it curious.

"Ah, ye-no, I'm sorry," Peterson blurted out. He stood up quickly. "I — Could you please excuse me for a few minutes?" He'd flushed. Embarrassed as hell, Remy diagnosed.

"Of course."

Peterson rushed into his private washroom, closing the door behind him with a sharp bang.

Remy allowed himself to look at the door with a raised eyebrow. Then he shrugged and reached for another folder in his briefcase. Hidden beneath the Manila folder, his fingers found and touched a set of pressure points in the lining of the case, activating a spoof program that transmitted a looped picture of himself into the room's security cam pickup. Until he disengaged it, it would show Robert Lord casually reading through a file, leaning back, drumming his fingers, looking bored and then irritated, making some notes and killing time while he waited for Peterson to exit the bathroom.

Speaking of the bathroom … Remy wrinkled his nose at the odor seeping out. Forge's gas had an unpleasant and embarrassing effect on the system. Peterson wouldn't recover from the effects for another half hour, minimum. That should be plenty of time.

Remy strolled over to the door into the front office and locked it. Then he opened the briefcase completely and accessed a hidden panel. A set of tools wrapped in black cloth and a belt with various other toys provided by the armorers of the Thieves' and Assassins' Guilds, along with a few things he'd picked up the last time he'd been in Madripoor — where you could buy anything for a price — was revealed. Underneath was a black skinsuit spidered over with pale blue thermal reducers.

He stripped out of his Italian suit and accessories, leaving them on the chair he'd occupied and donned the skinsuit. It too was a custom piece of tailoring, only it reduced his thermal signature to the ambient temperature, rendering him invisible to heat sensors. It included a hood and mask that covered his head and face. A single slit allowed him to see and the mask was porous enough to breath through.

He chuckled to himself. It did resemble a 'full body condom', even more than the spandex and skintight armor the X-Men favored did. The belt went around his waist and the tools into pockets on his thighs and arms.

A shrug and a series of stretches ending in a vertical split made sure everything fit and wouldn't come loose or bind later and warmed up his muscles. Sweet adrenaline sung through his system. A predatory grin lit his hidden features. He loved this.

He leapt onto the desk light as a cat, reached up to the ceiling and used a multi-tool from his gear to remove the vent cover into the air circulation system. It really would be more secure if it wasn't large enough to allow a body in the system of duct work, but then it would unserviceable too.

One jump straight up let him catch his fingers into the top of the interior of the duct, along a welded seam. He drew himself up and in using only upper body strength, careful to never touch the bottom of the duct. The whole system was booby trapped with weight and motion sensors. A mouse couldn't make its way along the bottom of the ducts without setting off a series of alarms.

Once up, he twisted and braced his back against one side and his legs against the other side. The technique resembled the way a free climber went up a mountain chimney, only turned sideways.

Piece of cake, he thought.

The clock in his head told him exactly how long he had until Peterson would recover enough from the emetic and diarrheic effects of Forge's gas to exit the washroom. He needed to be back and waiting before them. He kept his shoulders against the side and walked himself toward his target, another office.

He had no doubt it would be empty. He'd spent two weeks charting the target's routine, then sicced Betsy on the man. She would keep him occupied all afternoon if need be. He expected the telepath to make him pay for it too — something haut couture from the next Paris showing probably. He'd pick up something for Stormy too — maybe even Jean — both women had the height and style to pull off any fashion. Remy dismissed the pleasant but distracting thought of strolling the Avenue des Champs Elysées with the X-women and concentrated on the pinch.

There it was. No one inside, as predicted. Lights off. Computer off. All failsafes and security measures running. That just made it more fun. He could see the laser grid crisscrossing the room above head height clearly. He'd always thought that aspect of his eyes' nocturnal mutation was handy.

He traced the intricate weave of crimson light. Yes. There. It wasn't the worst he'd ever contended with by a longshot. The best in his Guild could go through it, Yukio could do it and a couple of other freelancers he knew of, but they'd all need a touch of technological help. They'd never manage it as fast as he would without turning off the lasers.

Arrogant, LeBeau? Non, just good.

He dropped headfirst into the air of the office. One heartbeat, bend into a pike, two, a fast spinning tuck, three, turn it into a half salto, four, arch back in a half layout, brush hand against wall to push away and five, drop into a crouch, half kneeling on the desktop. Maneuvering his body through the laser grid and never hesitating for a nanosecond.

Six, snatch the paper that threatened to float to the floor out of the air.

He set the sheet down exactly where it had rested before.

He stayed on the desk top and bent over the computer that sat detached from the rest of the network. Somewhere on the hard drive would be what he wanted. He was as comfortable hacking through the ice and firewalls to steal secured information as he was lifting priceless works of art from a private collection, but the government had smartened up. They kept all the really hot information on isolated machines. The best the X-Men had been able to discover from the Pentagon network was the location of this office and the man who occupied it.

He didn't need any hacking skills at this point though. Didn't need to even boot up the computer. If there was a monitor on energy usage in the office, it wouldn't show anything, no light switched on, no electronics at all. That was important because the plan was to walk out of the Pentagon just like he'd walked in, no one the wiser to his real purposes. Just plug in Forge's latest invention and count off the seconds until the little yellow light turned green, telling him it had duplicated everything on the hard drive. He tucked it into an insulated case attached to his belt.

He tipped his head up and studied the laser grid again. Not quite so easy going up, of course. Gravity was inconvenient. He'd always envied the flyers. Some of Jean's TK would be useful in situations like this. Wolverine said he was the best at what he did, but Remy was the best at what he did too and what he did was steal. He didn't need to be able to fly to get out of here. Just training, muscle, skill and a natural talent for acrobatics, but that would be more than enough.

He tensed the muscles in his thighs and calves, rested his splayed fingers on the desk, readied himself with a cleansing breath and leapt upward. He twisted his body through the laser maze with precise grace as he reached and caught the edge of the air vent's opening. The muscles in his arms and shoulders and abdomen sang as he pulled himself up and in, curling his legs tight to his torso until he'd hand walked himself around and could wedge his knees against one side.

The countdown he'd been keeping in the back of his mind said he had nine minutes to get back to Peterson's office.

A single trickle of sweat crawled down his spine as he worked his way back.

The rest of it went just as easy as he'd predicted, planning the heist. He descended from the air ducts, swiftly replaced the vent cover, and switched back into his elegant suit with all the evidence safely stowed in his case, exactly one minute forty-three seconds before Peterson opened the bathroom door.

Remy slipped his glasses back on, blinking at the smell that escaped into the office despite the best efforts of the bathroom's fan.

"I'm terribly sorry — " Peterson said.

Remy waved his hand. "No, nothing a man can do."

"Yes, well, I do apologize for making you wait like this."

"Ah, yes." He checked his watch ostentatiously. "I'm afraid I have another engagement. Perhaps I could leave our proposal with you and reschedule this meeting to a time more convenient to both of us?"

Peterson grimaced.

"Maybe that would be a good idea, Mr. Lord."

"Merci." Remy started for the door. "I will have my assistant call. We should do this soon."

"Yes. We can do that. Are you going to be in DC much longer? Maybe you can enjoy some of the city's attractions?"

"Another week," Remy lied absently. He doubted the District of Columbia had any attractions he hadn't already explored, including many Leland Peterson would never dream of, but he had no intention of hanging around to look for more. "I'm afraid my schedule doesn't allow for any … recreation."

"Too bad."

"Until we meet again, Mr. Peterson," he said and offered his hand to shake again.

The door unlocked under his hand as he exited. He nodded to the lieutenant at his desk and strolled into the corridor.

He didn't let his smile escape until he parked his rental car in an empty Maryland field and watched the Blackbird decloak before him. A mild surface charge fed through the car burnt away any DNA traces and fried the vehicle's electronics.

Psylocke and the rest of his team — Black Team — were already onboard, playing poker while they waited, as he climbed into the plane. Psylocke still had on the little black cocktail dress she'd worn to distract Harper and a sullen expression. Remy sighed. He was going to hear about this. Betsy didn't mind using sex as a weapon, but she hated anyone taking her for granted.

"Didn't even break a sweat, mes amis," he declared.

Rictor shook his head, but didn't look up from his cards. "Madre the Dios," he muttered as Shatterstar laid down the winning hand.

Marrow sniffed the air.

"You reek, Cajun."

Jubilee rolled her eyes.

Remy chuckled.

"That gas of Forge's have a strong effect, petite. Gambit think maybe you catching a whiff of M'sieu Peterson's discomfort, mais yeah."

"Could be, bub," Jubilee laughed. "Come on, Shatty, let's get back so King Creole here can get a shower." She snagged Shatterstar's strawberry blond ponytail and tugged as she went by.

Shatterstar followed Jubilee into the cockpit after nodding to Remy.

Remy plucked at his suit coat and frowned, sniffing too.

"Think this'll have to be burned," he said mournfully. It really was too bad. The suit looked so good on him. Such was life.

Betsy smirked.

He brightened and smiled at her.

"Just gives us another reason to go shopping, chere, right?"

"As long as you're paying, LeBeau," she purred.

He'd been right. This job was going to cost him. He sat down opposite her and leaned back as Jubilee and Shatterstar launched the jet into the air.

"I'm not playing with you, Marrow," Rictor snapped.

"Who said I wanted you to?" Marrow snarled back. "Shaky."

"Loco bitch."

"How'd you like a chunk of femur up your ass instead of 'Star's — "

"Sarah!" Remy snapped. How had he agreed to leading this team of psychotics anyway? Oh, yeah, he had experience. "Enough."

He could feel her sulking across the cockpit, but she did listen. Rictor had sufficient sense to stay silent too.

He closed his eyes, abruptly exhausted, his adrenaline played out.

"Relax, Remy," Betsy told him. "Just think, we get to tell Cyclops our team managed a mission without blowing anything up. You know how rare that is for the X-Men."

His lips twitched up in a smile. "There is that," he agreed. He'd get to push Cyke's buttons.

"Just as soon as I get that shower."

United States
Elko, Nevada

Vertigo sat on the edge of a black Formica lab counter and swung her legs. All around her, men and women, soldiers and scientists, were on the floor, groaning and puking, too sick to coordinate themselves enough to lift their faces. She grinned.

The last time Sinister had cloned her, he'd upgraded her powers again. She had a fine control that let her focus her abilities like never before. She'd disabled every human in the base they were attacking without affecting the other Marauders at all.

Except for Scrambler. She'd let Kim Il Sung have a taste of the rolling nausea and balance disturbances she'd hit everyone else with and smiled sweetly when he complained.

"What do you mean? None of the others feel anything."

She'd glanced at Riptide and Arclight.

"Do you?"

They shook their heads.

"Maybe it was those cabbage rolls you hogged last night."

Right before he used his touch to nullify her powers and tried to drag her into his room for a little 'slap and tickle'. He'd forgotten she had a hand-to-hand skillset now and ended up on the floor, lucky she hadn't put a knife through his throat. This was just a little payback between the two of them.

Okay, she had slept with him a few times, but that was back a couple of clone lives ago, when she was still stupid. She was with Janos now and no one else, unless Remy came back. Remy was fun and had always treated her like a lady, not like some second class mutate. She missed him. Scalphunter was a good leader, but he didn't make any of them laugh.

They should never have listened to fucking Sabretooth going into the tunnels. Secret orders from Sinister her ass. If she ever runs into Victor Creed again, he's going to need that healing factor. If it weren't for him, Remy would still be with them where he belonged.

"Bitch," Scrambler snarled at her.

"Shut it," Scalphunter commanded. He snapped a clip of explosive ammunition into his favorite gun. "Vee's done her job. Now we do ours. In and out in twenty minutes, people. There will be troops dispatched as soon as someone misses the first scheduled check-in."

With everyone down and out, it was a walk through.

Scalphunter was downloading everything on the lab's network. His mutant ability to convert anything into a weapon allowed him to cobble together an interface that bypassed any security they had. It was just a trick. He shouldn't have been able to, but lately they'd all learned to be creative with their powers. It was just a matter of attitude. If he thought of hacking and information as weapons, his power kicked in. Sort of like a mathematical idiot savant who could only read Ulysses if it was translated into binary.

Arclight and Blockbuster were going through the scientists, picking out the ones Sinister wanted brought back to join his captive research group. A little telepathic conditioning and they'd be pod people, pale nervous creatures that flitted down the dark corridors of whatever base Sinister was using, hurrying to finish whatever experiments the boss told them to do.

As soon as they had all of them, Scalphunter would signal for pick-up. Sinister would open one of his tesseracts, they'd sling the scientists through, blow this Popsicle stand and evacuate themselves.

Blockbuster came in with three bodies slung over his shoulders. Arclight was carrying another and dragging one more by the collar of his lab coat. She looked pissed.

"Tone it down, Vee," she snapped. "These fuckers are puking all over us."

Vertigo shrugged and eased up on the nausea she was pumping out. She kept their heads spinning too hard to think, though. Science wienies could be dangerous. They had Sinister as an example of just how dangerous. The boss was the scariest man Vertigo had ever seen, subzero insane, and she'd seen some real crazies back in the Savage Land.

"That's all of them," Blockbuster declared, dropping his three in a heap in the center of the room.

"Good," Scalphunter said absently. He was deep in tinkering with a piece of equipment. "Arc, you want to set up some charges through the place?"

"On it."

"What about the rest of 'em?" Riptide asked.

Scalphunter looked up. The black Fu Manchu mustache he affected lifted as he grinned.

"Kill 'em."

Riptide laughed, throwing his head back. "All right. "

His long lavender hair fanned out as he began to spin, transforming into a human tornado that whirled out and down the corridors, resin shuriken hitting helpless victims wherever he went.

The rest of the Marauders followed.

Fun time.

New Genosha
Northern Districts

Scanner stretched herself through the Astral Plane, searching. There they were. Her insubstantial mental form strolled among the insurgent group. She catalogued who was there and what weaponry they had.

An Acolyte team was waiting to attack once she had finished scouting.

Her lip curled.

These were the last resistors, holed up in a makeshift camp in the rough, uninhabited hills of northern Genosha. Living in filth and squalor and spite, running out of food and supplies, united at last in equal misery.

Look at them, she thought. Magistrates and mutates allied just to stand against Magneto, the best thing that had ever happened to this benighted country.

There was Pipeline, the traitor, the mutant who had sold his kind out by becoming a Magistrate, then later sold out the chance Magneto gave him as part of his Cabinet and tried to stab him in the back. Wanted in a dozen countries for participating in the kidnappings of mutants during the Renard Regime. Not in the US, because even before the Creed Administration the bastards in power wanted mutants gone.

Sitting a few feet away was Prodigy, a mutate. He'd used his earth shaking abilities to bring down a provincial hospital weeks ago for having the gall to treat baseline humans and mutates in the same wards. Scanner could almost sympathize with him. Almost, because the Acolytes started out as fanatical as he is, but they have had to move on since Magneto took over Genosha. They've seen Magnus weak, they've seen him make mistakes and exchanged their blind faith for determination. They've stopped following and started helping. Prodigy has embraced hate instead.

And there, staring into the distance with blank eyes, was old bulldyke President Renard herself. Someone had snatched her out of the nuthatch to act as a rallying point for the humans, but she was too far gone. Even the flatscans couldn't see her as anything but a monster.

Pipeline was sitting on a rock, trying to repair a sat radio. If he could get a transmission going to a satellite, he could digitize himself out of Genosha, go underground again. It's not going to happen though. Magneto's jamming everything going out of Genosha, radio, cell and landline. The fiber optic cables leading to South Africa have been severed. Pipeline's trapped on the island.

Scanner ghostwalked through the astral representation of the camp. There was a single tank, Gulf War vintage, with one track off. Even if the rebels had shells for the main gun, the Acolytes could deal with it. Back in a tent under camouflage net, she found a cache of nerve gas, yellow stencils in Cyrillic identifying where it came from. It looked old too. Probably unstable. They'd need a hazmat team to dispose of it. She made a note to suggest Voght take the job of controlling any that escaped; she could teleport a gas cloud into the ocean depths if necessary.

Walking back through the camp one more time, she counted minds. Sometimes physical things didn't appear on the Astral Plane, but minds always did. She found two she knew, Rem-Ram and Senyaka, two of Cortez' renegade Acolytes who escaped the attack on Carrion Cove. She was startled to see they were sitting with Philip Moreau, eating beans cold from the can, passing it and the fork back and forth.

Poor bastards, she thinks as she lets herself fly back to her body, waiting in the assault transport just beyond sensor range.

She snapped back into her flesh and opened her eyes. It was always a shock. She felt too heavy. She was burning, going dark …

"Breathe, pet," Pete Wisdom told her. His deep blue eyes locked with hers, one hand rested light and warm on her breastbone.

Scanner pulled in a lungful of air with a harsh gasp.

"You find them?" he asked.

She nodded.

Katu looked over his shoulder from where he sat in the pilot's seat of the transport. "All of them?"

"Yes," she rasped out.

Her head was clearing as she remembered to breathe. Her heart thumped against her chest. Maybe she'd pushed things a little farther with that last scan. She realized she was lying across a couple of seats and pulled herself upright.

Wisdom kept a steadying hand on her shoulder. She was glad he had command of this operation. He was — by his own proclamation — a ruthless git, but he never sent his people into a situation blind. He'd taught them all that you can do more damage with knowledge than mere fists.

Obnoxious Brits who drank too much, smoked like chimneys and had worked for the government at one time weren't Scanner's type, but Wisdom could be sweet when he thought no one would notice. He had beautiful eyes and a hard, wiry body. He was completely devoted to Shadowcat too. He never looked at anyone else.

She really envied Shadowcat sometimes.

"How many?" he asked.

"Twenty-three, including Renard."

"Renard's with them? So that's what happened to her."

"She just a flatscan. I don't think she's even there enough to pick up a gun," Scanner said.

"No, it's just bad publicity if it gets out we put her down."

"No one's planning on televising this," Klaus said. His pale eyes were slitted against the afternoon glare through the port holes.

Neophyte worked almost exclusively on Wisdom's team. He said Wisdom knew how to use his phasing abilities better than any other commander. He'd learned from Shadowcat.

"You do something stinky, sooner or later someone sniffs it out," Wisdom opined. He shrugged. "We'll worry about public opinion some other time. It's time to get rid of these bleedin' pillocks what are screwin' up Genosha for the rest of us."

"I saw Pipeline and Prodigy there," Scanner said. She paused. Wisdom lifted his eyebrows. "Rem-Ram, Senyaka and Philip Moreau."

"The old Genegineer's kid, that Moreau?" Wisdom asked.

Scanner sighed. Wisdom and Shadowcat hadn't arrived in New Genosha until after Magneto's first coalition cabinet dissolved. He'd never met Philip Moreau, might not even have been briefed on the man's history. Philip Moreau was more than the token Genoshan baseline human on the cabinet. He'd been the one to flee Genosha with his mutate girlfriend Jenny Ransome and alert the world to the true nature of Genoshan society. His own father had been the Genegineer in charge of the Mutate Bonding Process. His brother Thomas had been one of its victims, becoming the now dead radical Zealot. If Scanner had ever felt sympathy for a baseline, it was for Philip Moreau, but he'd disappeared years ago after Jenny's death. They knew he'd been held by Sugarman for months before the raid on Carrion Cove that consolidated Magneto's complete control of the country. No one had seen the man after that, no one knew exactly what Sugarman had done to him.

She imagined Senyaka and Rem-Ram had gotten him out. They'd been among the renegades defending Carrion Cove.

He was probably as broken and useless as Renard. Explaining all that daunted her. She said only, "Yes."

"Guess the apple don't fall far from the tree. No matter. We knew clean up would be a dirty job. He dies with the rest of them." Wisdom's narrow features hardened. "Give Katu the coordinates and let's get this over with."

Scanner sent the exact location directly into Katu's mind.

"Ready, Commander," Katu reported.

Wisdom lit a cigarette with a flare from a tiny hotknife at his fingertip.

"Anything else, Scanner?"

"They've got some nerve gas canisters in the northwest quadrant of the camp, in a tent."

"Voght, that's your look-out," Wisdom directed. "Port it into the bottom of the Madagascar Basin."

He looked around the Acolyte gathered in the transport.

"You all know your jobs. Do 'em."

Yield

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:19:10 GMT

17: Comfortably Numb

AD 2227, February 1
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

Bobby was cold.

Ice.

It was his power, his element, but not his nature. Not originally. That came later, during the Gene Wars, when he stopped being a big overgrown kid who played with ice and became it instead.

Now, even when he was with Remy, inside he felt cold.

He loved Remy. He did. It wasn't that. It wasn't that Remy was part of the Triune and Bobby wasn't. God no. Bobby had never wanted power. Still didn't. It wasn't that Remy didn't love him. Nothing was so sure as Remy's love; he felt how Remy loved him through their psi-bond, one of the perks of being with an empath. That was constant.

It was the thing he saw from the corner of his eye, an idea that had taken root in his brain, the way things would go.

Not the reunification or whatever tripe the newsies were calling letting the flatscans back in, with all their talk about bringing down the Barrier and ending the Interdict. That would happen, sure. The Constants had known from the beginning.

He used to be called Iceman. Now it was just Ice. Sometimes, Bobby wondered when he became so brittle and cold. Cold was his element. Someday, he thought, he would become his element. Not Bobby, not a man, not flesh, just ice.

Not yet, not for a long time maybe, not so long as he had Remy to anchor him, but that was the thing that scared him.

Remy was holding something back from him.

Sometimes Remy shimmered as though his body could barely contain the kinetic energy that was his essence. Emotion and motion danced in the balance. Sometimes the Phoenix peered ablaze from Jean's eyes, hungry to burn and fly again. Sometimes Magneto seemed ready to melt into the electromagnetic fields of the entire solar system, to surf the seas of the sun, the way Bobby could dissolve into water vapor and temperature gradations across the planet. Someday they would.

What of flesh then?

Energy couldn't cradle a cold front in his arms nor make love to him in the night when the world was strange and old and never ending.

He saw it happening to some of the others too.

Betsy was shadow. Milan rode the electron stream of information through a technological net that stretched as far as the Shi'ar Galaxy, Shadowcat was insubstantial as a ghost, Scanner spent more time on the Astral Plane than in her body and Northstar flickered and vibrated, always moving even as he pretended to stay in one place. They would go too. Mystique melted from shape to shape, her only default the memory the rest of them hold of her. Mystique was Change incarnate while Logan, Logan was Nature, eternally red in tooth and claw. Logan would forget, such was the nature of his beast; that was Nature's law, to live always in the forever now.

Domino, well, maybe Domino wwould hold onto who she was, because Domino had always been lucky. Or maybe she'd be lucky enough to forget. Chance be a fine thing, the right butterfly would always beat its wings for the lady. Things just went her way.

They would all forget, in time, some slower than others, but it would happen, Bobby suspected. Maybe it would be a blessing to shed the weight of memory, to become and let go of all the rest, to be what they were and no longer who.

Remy would hate it and fight it to the end. So would Magneto. It would be a kind of death. Bobby knew he might welcome it some day.

Remy thought everyone left in the end. Bobby didn't want to be the one who proved him right.

He was afraid though and he was cold.

Yield 16

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:16:43 GMT

16: The Scouring

AD 2005, March 6
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

"We will scour the taint of mutancy from humanity!"
Unknown orator, Friends of Humanity rally, Fort Worth, Texas, 2006

They'd taken a flat in one of the mostly intact buildings within a few blocks of Magda Square. The elevators didn't work, but there was water and electricity and the foundations and frame of the five story redstone building were sound. That made it prime real estate in Hammer Bay, despite the damage done to the west side fourth floor by what had probably been a stray plasma blast. A chunk of wall had been burned away, leaving two flats on that side open to the elements.

They didn't bother mentioning to the manager that they were part of the new government. Nor that they were mutants. Their accents marked them as foreigners and the only foreigners in New Genosha were mutants who had answered Magneto's call to create a new homeland. So the man pretty much knew off the bat.

Kitty felt uncomfortable around the building manager, thought he might be one of the old school Genoshans that didn't believe mutants were human, but Pete shrugged it off. Said the man was just as likely prejudiced against the Star of David pendant she wore and to ignore him.

He didn't bother them and they didn't talk to him except once to complain about the cold water. He promised to fix it, but didn't, and Pete went on heating their baths with his hot knives.

Life took on a very different rhythm for them once they reached Genosha.

They flew into the country's only international airport on an Antonov An-70 flying out of Madripoor with every bit of gear they could beg, borrow or steal — knowing there wouldn't be much to work with once they reached Genosha. Thus they had a computer with a satellite link-up that let them stay in touch with the outside world, unlike most of the Genoshan population, but they were still isolated in comparison to their lives before.

Magneto had them met at the airport when they arrived. Two Acolytes — Scanner and Neophyte — were waiting for them, making everyone around them nervous. They had an armored limousine waiting.

The interview in the Citadel was an anticlimax.

Neophyte and Scanner stood by the door they'd all come in. The room had been stripped. The only thing in it besides them was a metal table salvaged from somewhere and a collection of obviously scavenged desk chairs. There were holes and darker areas on the walls where equipment and pictures had been removed. Even the light fixtures were gone; the only light came through the windows.

Magneto wore his red and purple armor. The distinctive helmet that protected his thoughts from telepaths sat on the scarred tabletop. He stood with his back to the windows.

Kitty and Pete were respectively in grungy jeans and sweat shirt (that rather unfortunately had Xavier's printed across the front) and a crumpled black suit. They did not look impressive.

"Why are you here?"

Pete pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "Pryde here wanted to come."

"And that's enough for you?" Magneto asked. He walked up to the table and casually rested his fingertips on the helmet.

Pete shrugged.

"It got her out of the States and away from that bleedin' pillock Xavier," he said.

A smile almost lightened Magneto's expression at Pete's less than fond description of the Professor. It did when Kitty elbowed Pete hard. "Don't talk about him like that."

"He's an obsessed, unrealistic, manipulative old lech," Pete griped. "Probably gets off peeping in everyones' heads at night."

"I take it you and Charles are not on good terms?" Magneto interrupted.

"I ain't interested in running around in primary colored spandex and lettin' me enemies off with a warning so they can come back and shoot me in the head when I ain't lookin'," Pete said. He took a puff on his cigarette and nodded. "I don't need his money or his so-called training to use m' powers. I ain't been brainwashed by him since I weren't old enough to know what m' balls were for like Summers and the weather bitch. I smoke. I drink. I'm sleeping with Pryde. And I ain't apologizing because I got m' hands dirty a time or two in my life."

Magneto laughed, long and loud. "I see."

Pete pointed at him with the hand holding his cigarette.

"Don't get the idea I'm going to be bowin' down to 'Lord' Magneto, either, Lehnsherr. I'm here for Pryde and no one else."

Magneto didn't appear concerned. "I don't require worship, Mr. Wisdom. Loyalty is sufficient."

Pete shrugged.

"Earn it from Pryde and you'll have it from me, then," he'd said.

Magneto looked at Kitty then.

"And you, Katherine? Why have you come?"

Kitty lifted her chin. "Because maybe you can make something here and … and because nothing the X-Men have done has made any real difference in the way mutants are seen in the States. I don't think the Professor's way is the only way to help mutants any more." She sighed. "I still love and respect him, but I'm an adult now and I realize he isn't infallible."

"And you already knew that about me," Magneto said.

Kitty smiled a little.

"Yes."

"So I ask you again, Katherine Ann Pryde, why are you here?"

"To help."

"Then, welcome."

They didn't have much contact with their old friends, especially those on the X-teams. Too much bad blood. Xavier's followers couldn't really see Magneto as anything other than a supervillain and their seeming arch-enemy. There had been some outright bitterness on the parts of Archangel, Storm and the Professor.

Kitty was surprised by the people who did stay in touch.

Odd and welcome packages would appear care of Landau, Luckman and Lake, the mysterious legal firm that handled Wolverine's business interests out of Madripoor. Scotch for Pete and music for her, along with an adamantium katana and dai katana on her birthday. Those were from Logan. Remy sent cigarettes and the encryption codes for the newest Arianespace satellite, along with a spectacular jade carving of Kuanyin. Kurt sent her a complete DVD box set of Errol Flynn movies. Bobby sent a prank card with a coded message giving Kitty access to a trust account set up in Liechtenstein for her and Pete. Meggan sent a packet of long, rambling letters describing everything happening at Muir and Braddock Manor — that someone (probably Brian, possibly Kurt, as she couldn't imagine Logan doing so) had gone through with a censor, cutting out any information Magneto might have found useful.

Kitty decorated the flat with things she and Pete liked, without worrying too much about how it looked to anyone else. Pete was an unmitigated slob and didn't care — she'd seen his rooms in London — but the flat was Kitty's first home: she'd lived with her parents, then at Xavier's School and later the Muir Island Research Station. None of those places had been hers the way the flat in Hammer Bay, with its cracked plaster ceilings and the scorched smell that came through the heating vents sometimes, was.

It didn't come easy.

Pete, courtesy of his days as a Black Air operative, had lived in war zones and countries suffering in the aftermath of wars. He'd been in Genosha more than once too. He knew how to move through Hammer Bay.

Kitty's experiences as Shadowcat of the X-Men and later Excalibur consisted of in-and-out missions. She'd been in dozens of countries, but with the exception of Scotland, England, and Japan, had spent no time getting to know them. There had always been someone trying to kill her. Distracting, to say the least.

It seemed very ironic that she lived a more 'normal' life, one that included paying rent, washing dishes every night and trying to grow daffodils in a pot on the kitchen windowsill, while living in Genosha under the rule of Magneto than she had in the US or UK.

For two years, she hadn't left Genosha. She used her computer and engineering skills to set up networks and operating systems for everything from a new fire department to a rebuilt hospital to the customs and immigrations service Magneto had to reinstitute as more and more American mutants arrived on the island. Not once did she use her mutant powers in a violent confrontation.

At the same time, Pete had taken on the dirty job of unearthing Magistrate sympathizers and even the mutate rebels that wouldn't let go of their enmities toward the regular citizens of the island.

He spent most of his time working with Scanner, while Kitty found herself working beside Milan regularly. She wondered what the X-Men would think if they knew she'd had both Acolytes over to the flat for dinner numerous times? Or that both she and Pete were members in good standing of Magneto's Reconstruction Cabinet? She would imagine Storm's expression of horror and grin to herself.

Her life had become quite insular, devoted to working within her new country, with new friends, filled with the satisfaction of seeing her accomplishments every day and sharing it with the man she loved every night.

She was twenty-two. She was happy.

Of course it couldn't last.

Pete was still sprawled asleep in their bed and she was in the bathroom, perched on the sink counter and waiting, early on a Tuesday morning in April when her peaceful, content bubble burst.

~SHADOWCAT!~

Telepathic shouts inevitably cause headaches. Kitty dropped the little stick she'd been holding and watching and clutched at her head.

~SHADOWCAT, WAKE UP!~

~I was already awake,~ Kitty responded. ~Ow.~

~Sorry,~ Scanner managed to convey apology and regret along with her words. ~You and Wisdom need to get to the Citadel ASAP. Magneto wants all the Cabinet. Something's happened in America. He's …~

A cold sensation rushed through Kitty. She had so many people she still cared about in America.

~He's what?~

~Furious,~ Scanner replied. Then added, ~Sad. Sick. Determined.~

Kitty shuddered. Magneto in a rage was something no one who had stood against him ever wanted to see again.

~Okay, we'll be there as soon as I can get Pete awake and moving.~

~Just get him dressed,~ Scanner advised. ~Voght's going to teleport you. She's bringing in everyone so expect her in the next five minutes.~

Amelia Voght's teleportation was even more stomach upsetting than Kurt's and exhausted the older woman. For her to be transporting the entire Cabinet in one morning, it had to be bad.

Kitty slid off the counter and picked up the plastic stick on the floor. She shoved it in her pocket then went into the bedroom.

"Pete, get up."

"Wha — ?"

"Amelia's picking us up. Get dressed or she'll drop you in the middle of the Cabinet conference table starkers."

"Shite," he groaned. "What bloody bastard's behind this?"

"Magnus wants everyone at the Citadel."

"Everyone?"

"The Cabinet."

"Something's hit the bleedin' fan, has it?"

Kitty nodded.

Pete scrubbed his dark whiskered cheeks with both hands. "All right then." He got out of the bed and staggered into the bathroom.

An instant later, Pete came out of the bathroom clutching a small, empty box, his blue eyes wide and his face pale.

"Kit, what the bleedin' hell is this?"

Kitty looked at the box.

"What does it look like?" she asked in a small voice.

Pete looked at the box. He took a deep breath.

"Well, are you?"

She fished the little stick out of her pocket and looked at the window for the first time.

The little plus sign had turned blue.

Excerpt from The Chetley Washington World Morning Report, televised on USBC, 14 January 2007. Transcript courtesy of the Telearchive of the North American Union.

Hunt Chetley: "We have National Security Advisor Henry Peter Gyrich with us today on Washington World Morning Report."

HC: "Mr. Gyrich, you've held numerous posts within various administrations and worked with the now defunct Office of Mutant Liaisons. How do you feel the Creed administration compares to previous ones?"

Henry Peter Gyrich: "This administration is the first to see and understand the real threat to our country and do something about it."

HC: "You mean the CMRA, of course."

HPG: "It's the first step. The first real step since Senator Kelly spearheaded the Sentinel Program."

HC: "What about Operation: Zero Tolerance?"

HPG: "O:ZT was a renegade operation, but it had the right idea. Mutants are simply too dangerous to be left within the general population."

HC: "You've never hesitated to make your views known, but you've never served in a cabinet that so closely echoes them. Has that changed how you feel at all?"

HPG: "No, not at all."

HC: "What about Ambassador Cargill of New Genosha's accusation in the latest United Nation's session that the Creed Administration means to initiate a mutant 'Final Solution'?"

HPG: The United States government does not recognize New Genosha as a state or the rantings of the madman ruling there. Personally, I find the phrase 'Final Solution' distasteful and overblown. The responsibility of any government is to safeguard its citizens, all of its citizens. That is what we are doing."

HC: "Mutant citizens?"

HPG: "Are safer with their own kind than in the general population. Your network covered the St. Louis riots a few weeks ago, where several mutants and one store keeper only suspected of being a mutant were killed. No one wants to see that sort of thing happening."

HC: "The victims were crucified."

HPG: "That wouldn't have happened if people weren't frightened — with good reason — of mutants."

HPG: "I'm not even talking about the justified fear of being harmed physically. Mutant and superpowered crime harm people every day. Just the property damage they do results in lost jobs, lost time and higher insurance rates. That translates into harder times for every working person in this country."

HC: "Some might argue that jobs are generated as well. As an example there is the New York based construction firm Damage Control that specializes rebuilding and repairing structures destroyed or weakened in various superpowered conflicts."

HPG: "Damage Control serves a purpose, but not one that should exist. Businesses that salvage a profit from picking through the wreckage aren't to be admired. They're vultures. At least, in my book."

HC: "Strong words."

HPG: "I stand by them."

United States
Dayton, Ohio

The black panel van parked along the curb in front of the small suburban house's neatly cut lawn. The two black SUVs double parked in the street, one at each end of the block.

The men who exited the van were too tall, too fit and physically confident to be anything but soldiers, despite wearing dark gray suits. Silver sunglasses hid their eyes despite the hour: nine-thirty p.m. The pale orange halogen street lights reflected off the lenses as they walked up to the front step of the small, ranch style house. One of them walked to the side and stationed himself between the house and the minivan parked in the driveway.

They marched up to the door and gave it that cop knock — the hard rap rap rap that says answer the door or have it kicked open. One of them carried a heavy, metal-sided case. Someone looking closer might have noticed the bulges under their jackets from the shoulder holsters. They ignored the yellow plastic kids' toys piled in a bin beside the door.

The man who opened the door had come home from a moderately tiring day at his job managing a nursery. He had on a UCLA sweatshirt he'd held onto since college — the one his wife kept trying to throw out. He eyed the men on his front step with a combination of disbelief and apprehension. Like calls after midnight, men in suits and sunglasses could only mean trouble.

He was polite man. He paid his taxes, came to a full stop at intersections, and gave to the United Way. "Can I help you?" he asked.

"Brian Pruett?"

"Yes."

He was becoming increasingly uneasy.

"Federal Marshals."

The man in the lead, a crew cut blond, pulled a badge case out and flipped it open, displaying a Federal Marshal's star. He put it away before Brian Pruett could see if it was real or what the man's name was. He pushed his way past Brian into the softly lit hall.

"Hey, you can't just bull your way into my house!"

The 'marshal' next to the blond pulled out a triple folded paper from his jacket, let it drop open and held it up for Brian to read. The close typed words were a blur without his glasses but he noticed an official seal and a scrawled signature. Judge Marlon Atkins. It looked real enough to Brian.

"This is a warrant to search the premises and detain or arrest Melissa Haines Pruett and Daniel Pruett under the provisions of the Modified Patriot Act, Amendment IV, in accordance with the Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act. Any attempt to interfere will be considered 'obstructing justice' and grounds for arrest, and will result in charges of aiding and abetting, conspiracy and terrorism," the blond recited in a flat voice.

Brian still had his hand resting on the edge of his open front door. He stared at them. His wife was in the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher. His oldest son was doing homework at the dining room table. The two younger children were in the living room watching TV. What did any of that have to do with mutants or terrorism? Sure, Melissa and Daniel had powers but they'd never done anything with them — it was like having an extra toe or red hair, it didn't define who they were or what they did. Melissa worked as an office manager. Daniel was a high school kid. They'd both dutifully registered at the first of the year.

"What — ?" he stuttered out.

The marshals pushed him aside and strode into his house.

"Hey, wait, you can't just — "

Another one of the men drew his pistol from under his jacket and held it in front of Brian's eyes. With his other hand, he shoved Brian's chest.

"Shut. Up."

He sneered as Brian fell back against the wall.

"Mutie lover."

His wife screamed in the kitchen and Daniel began shouting.

Brian surged forward as Melissa was dragged down the hall. Behind her came two of the marshals, frog-marching Daniel. A fifth marshal shoved a vase of flowers off the side table in the hall and set the metal-sided case he carried on it. It was snapped open and two heavy, brushed steel collars were brought out. A telltale light shown red next to locks. Brian stared, guessing what they were: inhibitor-collars. He'd seen pictures on the news, years back, when the Genoshan government broadcast a show trial of the X-Men. The prisoners had all worn manacles and similar collars. But that was in another country

Daniel saw them and started fighting harder. Spikes tore through his T-shirt as his mutation activated. Another moment and they'd be long enough to launch.

"No!" Brian shouted. "Daniel, don't!"

This had to be a mistake, but if Daniel attacked the marshals, they might not be able to get it straightened out. His spikes were dangerous. The hollow quills held a mild neurotoxin. They paralyzed most people, but someone might conceivably suffer a lethal reaction.

"Brian?" Melissa asked. Her only mutation was levitation. She'd joked that using it to save her feet during her pregnancy had made Daniel a mutant too. The sad thing was she hadn't levitated at all while pregnant with Jimmy or Maggie. Just in case.

"Shut up," snapped the marshal holding her arm. He snapped the collar around her throat and locked it. The red light flickered and switched to green. Melissa gasped and swayed.

Daniel stopped. The organic spikes he generated from his skin retreated back inside.

"Mom? Mom, are you okay? What happened?" Daniel demanded.

The marshal holding the gun set the muzzle between Melissa's eyes. "Be quiet and cooperate or I put a round through this genefreak's head," he threatened.

"Dad, you can't let them take us!"

"Daniel, just cooperate for the moment," Brian gasped. "I'll call our lawyer. You're both registered, you haven't done anything, this is all some kind of mistake."

Daniel shivered and lifted his chin as the inhibitor-collar was locked around his neck.

Brian lifted his hand, not sure what he was about to do, but not willing to see his wife and son dragged out of the house without explanation or reason.

The marshal shoved the muzzle of his pistol against Melissa's forehead. From the corner of his eye, Brian saw the two younger kids standing in the doorway of the living room. He swallowed hard.

"Jimmy, take your sister to your bedroom."

"Dad — "

"Now!"

His younger son caught Maggie's arm and dragged her back down the hall, throwing frightened glances over his shoulder.

"Smart thinking," the blond marshal said.

They started pushing Melissa and Daniel toward the door.

"Where are you taking them?" Brian demanded.

No answer.

He grabbed the arm of one of them. The next he knew he was on his knees, blood dripping from a split eyebrow where he'd been spun and shoved face first into the wall before being forced down.

"Don't ask questions, mutie lover," the marshal told him. "Don't make any noise or cause any trouble, understand? Worry about your normal kids. Who will take care of them, hunh?"

Daniel was yelling again as he was dragged out the door.

Melissa twisted and met his eyes. "Please, Brian," she whispered. "It's all some kind of misunderstanding."

The door slammed shut behind the last of them.

"Dad?" Jimmy whispered from behind him. There were tears in his voice. "Dad?"

He needed to call their lawyer. Shelby Willis would know what to do. He needed to clean the water and crushed flowers and broken glass off the floor. He needed to wipe the blood off his face, get up, and comfort Jimmy and Maggie.

"Dad? What's going on?"

He struggled up to his feet and faced his son.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

"But it's going to be okay, right?"

He lied.

"Everything's going to be okay."

"Reports of black vans and SUVs have replaced helicopters among conspiracy theorists this year, Blake. The tabloids are full of wild stories about people disappearing from their homes. Everyone has a theory. What about you? Call us at WDDB News and let us know what you think."

Westchester
Xavier's School of Higher Learning

Jubilee plopped down in one of the kitchen chairs and looked expectantly at Logan. She'd followed him, jabbering about bubble gum or boy bands or —

"FOH?"

He turned around and stared at her. Really stared. She'd grown up on him. Nineteen and in college and she wasn't babbling about crushes or new shoes, she was talking seriously about the anti-mutant movements starting to gather momentum on the college campuses.

"So I dropped out," she said.

He clenched his fists. "You. Did. What?"

Jubilee gave him that 'well, duh' look she'd perfected as a kid, blinking eyes that were still startling in their blueness when their almond shape would have looked more natural with brown or black.

"I quit. Split. Walked out. Hit the road. Waved bye-bye, gave notice, skipped, departed, decamped, flew the coop, pulled the plug and basically beat feet in retreat but not defeat back to the ye old X-Mansion," Jubilee explained lightly. Her mouth was smiling. Her eyes weren't. "Home is where when you have to go there they have to take you in, right? So I'm back."

"You ain't dropping out of school," he told her. Xavier might be Jubilee's technical guardian, but Logan had always considered her his little girl. They'd been 'partners' since she was twelve years old. He'd tried to give her whatever a girl needed growing up without pretending that life hadn't already shafted her twice over by making her a mutant and then orphaning her. He might not be smooth and formally educated, but he knew how important it could be for her to have a college education. "You're going to go back."

"No, I'm not," she said. No give in her voice at all. "I was wasting my time there anyway; Frosty covered everything they were teaching in our second year at the Academy." She shrugged. "I missed everyone anyway."

"Something else happened."

She shrugged. "Sure. Something always does."

He looked her over keenly. "You okay?"

"My room-mate was a prejudiced bitch who joined the FOH." Like that explained everything. "Had to get away before I paffed her."

He opened the refrigerator and retrieved a Molson absently. He knocked the cap off the bottle and took a swallow, then leaned back against the kitchen counter.

Jubilee rolled her eyes. "Wolvie, don't you get it? I'm not registered."

"And ya ain't going to," he snapped.

"Right, right, like I'm that stupid. But, Logan, it's a state school."

"And?"

"You want to register for classes," she explained quietly, "you get scanned."

He tightened his hand on the bottle.

"Shit."

He wanted to slice and dice somebody, but there wasn't any one person to blame for this. If they'd thought about it, they would have realized some of the kids were going to run into problems with the CMRA. They had all just wanted to believe they could wangle some kind of better, normal life for GenX. Emma and Sean had tried to treat them as students and children, not soldiers in training the way Magneto and Cable had with X-Force.

They'd been fooling themselves.

"What're you going to fix?"

"'The hell are ya asking me?" he demanded.

He was thinking about something else. He had his Canadian citizenship. 'Ro was technically from a different African state, but she had a Wakandan passport. Betts had a UK passport, though it had taken her brother Brian exerting some pull through the London Hellfire Club to get it switched over to match the new Asian body. He'd give odds the Cajun had a dozen identities, at least one of them French. Xavier had faked up something for Bishop after he dropped out of the timestream. But the rest of the X-Men were sitting ducks, walking around with nothing but American IDs. He couldn't believe none of them had thought about this before.

It wasn't like he didn't have the contacts to buy passports for all of them. Dom could do it, so could Cable. He'd just never thought Scott would go for it … but things had changed.

"'Cause it's your turn," Jubilee said, snapping his attention back to her.

She pointed to the refrigerator and the whiteboard glued to the freezer door. In blue marker, next to Wednesday dinner it said Wolverine.

He stared at it in disgust. Who the hell put together these schedules anyway? He'd never been to one team meeting that addressed who got stuck trying to cook for however many people were in the mansion on any night. The only ones who could be described as competent cooks were Jean, Sam, Remy and Rogue. Ororo would only fix vegetarian dishes. Anyone else on the schedule and it was a gamble that the food would even be edible.

"We need to a recruit someone with the mutant power of cooking," Jubilee said.

He opened the freezer, hoping there would be the usual stacks of frozen dinners. There wasn't. No one had shopped in a week. Opening and closing the cupboards revealed that — locust like — previous cooks had already scrounged anything easy to prepare. One revealed a cache of canned spinach, prompting him to wonder who in the mansion liked the wet, nasty stuff. Someone must, after all someone had bought it.

The only thing he found in any quantities were cornflakes and a case of Guinness.

"So what's for dinner, Wolvie?"

"Beer and cereal," he growled at her.

"I'm still under age."

"Bread and water."

"Pizza?"

"No one will deliver here anymore," Bobby said, poking his head through the doorway and looking around warily. "Well, a new place opened in Salem Centre. Dinallo's. You could try them. You haven't seen Storm have you?"

"Nope."

Wolverine watched Drake sidle into the room, throwing suspicious looks toward the windows.

"What'd you do this time?"

"I, uh, didn't know she was going to borrow Hank's shampoo." He looked hunted.

Jubilee leaned forward. "This is going to be good."

"She's going to kill me."

"Popsicle," Wolverine growled.

"WellyouseeIputNairinHank'sshampoo," Bobby blurted in one breath.

"And Ororo used it?" Jubilee asked.

Bobby nodded.

"You're dead, Bobby."

Bobby looked at Wolverine.

"Did it work?"

"I didn't stick around after Hank told me Storm had borrowed the shampoo," Bobby admitted.

A shriek echoed from upstairs. Lightning struck outside. The lights in the kitchen flickered.

"Oh shit."

"Got to agree with Jubilee," Wolverine said. He finished his beer and tossed the bottle in the glass recycling bin next to the back door. "'Ro's going to fry your ass."

"Please please please help me," Bobby begged. "Just until she gets over the worst of it."

Wolverine thought it over. Then he shrugged. "Come on. We need to pick up frozen pizza in town. You can help. Jubilee, you can come too."

"Oh joy," she said, but got up gracefully.

The Testing and Relocation Units are part of the overarching mandate of the Federal Bureau of Security, President Creed's new agency, which has been given authority over all other federal and state police agencies. The budget for BuSec includes funds to equip the newly minted TRUs with state of the art equipment through a DoD contract with Stark-Fujikawa.

In an interview with Daily Bugle reporter Peter Parker, Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Solutions and former CEO and major shareholder of Stark Enterprises, the precursor to Stark International before its merger with Fujikawa, decried the decision to mass produce battlesuits for the government, pointing out how often other weapons created for the military have found their way to the criminal and international arms blackmarket.

United States
Miami

He ran and Luisa ran with him.

He wished she hadn't.

She was human. She was slower than him, but he couldn't leave her behind.

The black SUVs with the opaque windows were everywhere. Every time they turned a corner, there one would be, streetlights shining liquid off the rain wet paint.

"Stop, mutant!" one of his pursuers shouted from behind them.

They didn't stop. He skidded around corner into a garbage strewn alley, knocking his shoulder into a brick wall. Luisa was panting. She'd kicked off her high heels and was running barefoot. He winced thinking of her feet.

"You are in contravention of the Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act. Failure to register is a Felony crime. We are authorized to use lethal force to secure you!"

Fuck.

Luisa was falling behind him. He didn't know what they would do to her for being with a mutant.

He slowed and grabbed her hand.

Oliver Martin Guitterez' metabolism ran several times faster than human. He could have outrun anyone except Northstar or Quicksilver without breaking a sweat. He'd had a quiet offer to go to work for Gavin Enterprises as a courier after he got out of school.

He might very well have outrun a bullet.

But he slowed down.

Two bullets hit him in the back. One slewed through his lung, ricocheted off a rib and tore upward, ripping open his inferior vena cava. The second penetrated his spine, paralyzing him from the hips down.

His hand let go of Luisa's.

He fell forward with a single choked cry and died within seconds from the interior bleed out.

He was dead in the gutter behind a Chinese restaurant at seventeen.

Luisa stumbled to her knees beside his body. She rolled him over and tried to give him mouth to mouth. She tasted his blood on her tongue.

"Move aside, bitch."

Luisa came up off the ground with a scream, attacking the closest man. She kicked and bit and caught at his face with her long red nails, tearing away the silver sunglasses he wore.

"Shit!" he shouted, shoving her away as she gouged a deep, bloody furrow in his cheek.

Luisa hit the brick wall and lost all her breath.

"Fucking bitch hurt me!"

In a daze, she looked up in time to see the muzzle of the gun line up on her. The red dot of the laser sight played up over her chest until it glimmered and rested on her forehead.

"I hope it scars, pendejo, " she snarled.

He pulled the trigger and she died.

"Hey, I thought he — " the second man kicked Oliver's body carelessly, " — was the only mutant we were after tonight."

The man Luisa had scarred — he would have the scar until he died six years later in New York — sneered at her body.

"She's going to be a mutie when I write my report."

He dabbed at the blood running down his cheek.

His partner glanced at him. "Jesus, she got you good."

"Goddamned bitch."

He spat on Oliver's body.

"They're both good muties now."

… In a related issue, accusations that the DARPA designs recently released for bidding by manufacturers were actually illegally obtained from private researchers including Reed Richards, Henry Pym, Brian Braddock, Viktor von Doom of Latveria and several others will be settled in court. Five different lawsuits have been filed in New York. Von Doom, the Latverian dictator, has threatened to take the matter to both the UN and the World Court.

Yield

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:57:02 GMT

15: Full of Grace

AD 2227, January 19
Hammer Bay
The Citadel

Jean hovered above the roof of the Citadel, arms out-stretched like the fiery ghost wings that haloed them, head thrown back, caught in the heady rush of the Phoenix Force. Her red mane writhed on the hot wind she generated and a white-hot glow surrounded her.

Light flared across the city of Hammer Bay in a blinding flash, limning its buildings in white, erasing every shadow for a terrifying instant. The great Firebird arched its neck back and screamed its defiance at the Universe. Wings wide spread it floated above the city, guardian and threat at once. It would not be tamed.

In another galaxy, the M'Kraan Crystal flared in synchrony. The Shi'ar who watched it shuddered. They remembered tales of time twisted and shattered within the Crystal and of a Dark Phoenix that consumed a solar system in its hunger for more and more power.

She opened her mind and let herself sense every mind on Genoshan soil, then stretched further and scanned those living in orbit on Avalon Station. The myriad thoughts that flooded her would have destroyed her mind and identity once. Now she had grown so strong she knew she could assume control of each and all of them, if she wished, with the exception of Remy and Erik.

Their powers, while different, were equal to hers, their shields as strong, their minds so deeply linked within her own they could match her in any contest. They were her anchor. They kept her sane.

Without them she would have swallowed up everything and everyone then extended her reach and taken the rest of the planet too. The Phoenix was life and death and all belonged to it to command, if Jean desired.

Instead, the Phoenix folded its wings and the light dimmed, and its avatar returned to the widow’s walk that capped the dome of the Citadel's Residence. Jean closed her shields and returned to the suite she occupied when in residence. Tonight she would sleep and tomorrow she would smile and watch silently, while picking everything useful from the minds of the UN delegation. The idiots were all wearing psi-shields that were supposed to protect them against telepathic probing and attacks. At the same time, none of the politicians even grasped what they were dealing with and some of the pathetic fools didn’t even believe in mutant powers.

Jean snorted. Of course, if any of them had been looking out their windows at the sky over the Citadel tonight they might have changed their minds after her little son et lumière.

Hammer Bay
Private Residence

It amused him sometimes that she kept her hair cut shorter than his, just a purple-black cap that outlined the elegant lines of her skull. It left the long line of her neck bare. He liked just touching his lips to the vulnerable nape and down her spine there.

Tonight she swatted him in affectionate irritability when he did it, so Wolverine walked around the couch and sat.

Domino was sitting Indian-style, a paper file open on her bare legs, long fingers flipping through the contents. Wolverine sat a frosted, open bottle of beer on the coffee table in front of her and took a long swallow from the one he retained. He sat back and savored the tart taste along with Domino's appearance.

She had stripped out of the dress uniform and now had on only a thin, black satin, spaghetti strapped tank and matching underwear. Her albino skin glowed fresh as a girl's, the black oval mark over her left eye stood out in stark contrast.

"Well, darlin'?" he asked once she stopped reading.

Domino scowled at the file.

"You know I'm not an Isolationist, Logan, but I'm damned if I think the UN has changed since the last time we dealt with them. Partisanship, petty back biting, sheer corruption, noble speeches; none of it's changed. Remy sent over the latest intelligence estimates. The only thing that will unite them is an outside threat. "

"No argument."

The Securidat mainly dealt with internal matters, but Logan was one of the Twenty Constant, the oldest of them all; he remembered life outside Genosha, before the Interdict. Even if the head of the Securidat hadn't rated regular intel briefings, the others would have kept him up. Since the Thief answered only to Magneto and had authority over every sort of Genoshan espionage, Logan had only to ask. He didn't need to read the file Domino held to guess the state of the outside world. He'd been old and cynical before the rest of them had been born.

Domino slapped the file shut and traded it for the beer. She emptied half of it one long gulp and sighed afterwards. "Well, guess who they'll cast?" she said sardonically.

"Don't have to, darlin', we both know there's more behind the Nulls wanting contact than their new orbital elevator sharing sky with Avalon Station."

Domino nodded glumly.

"Remy included a note, saying about the same thing."

Logan raised a heavy brow.

"Stuck it on the end," she explained. "I suppose he wanted me to read everything before influencing me, but it wasn't necessary."

Logan sat back on the sofa and kicked his booted feet onto the coffee table. Domino eyed them for a moment, but only shrugged. Another thing he liked about Dom. She didn't have a fussy, housekeeper gene in her entire body. The only thing she obsessed over cleaning were her guns.

"So?"

"So, they need something to rally the troops," Domino sighed. "And the Interdict has been damned successful. They're not scared of us any more. There's no one alive who remembers what fighting Alphas is like. The Gene Wars are ancient history. La Belle's just a bogey monster from the school books. Fuck, Patch, mutants aren't any more real to them than the Greek myths."

Logan finished his beer and set the bottle aside. He popped the claws from one hand, twisting it so the soft light ran down the three almost ten inch adamantium blades. With a snikt they disappeared back into his flesh, leaving only three beads of blood where he had immediately healed.

"Ain't considered if it'd be good thing to tick off ol' Lightnin' Bolts and bring the rest of the gods down off Olympus, have they?" he said.

Domino stretched like a big cat and grinned. "Unh-unh. You know the saying, 'Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain'?" she asked.

"Sure, darlin'. It's Schiller. Used to quote it at Chuck, before things went into the dumper."

They both grimaced, thinking about Xavier. The Imperial Consort of the Empress Lilandra Neramani might still be alive, with Shi'ar technology to keep him healthy, but no one had heard from him in over a century. The last time he had left Earth, he hadn't looked back. It was safe to assume Lilandra still held the throne though. If Deathbird had taken over, a Shi'ar invasion fleet would have gated into the system by now.

Logan picked up the two empty bottles and headed for the kitchen. "Want another?"

"Not really."

The albino mutant headed for the bedroom then stopped and stood hip-shot in the doorway.

"You coming?"

Logan tossed the bottles in the garbage.

"You bet, darlin'."

The file on the coffee table and its predictions could wait until morning. Neither of them paid any attention to the searing light that filled the sky later. They'd seen it before and knew it posed no threat to them.

Hammer Bay
Private Residence

The sleepy weight of the body beside him was a comfort. That warmth, physical and empathic, kept away the nightmares. Two and a half centuries later and he still relived his time in hell if he slept alone. He tried to avoid that and not only so he could sleep. An Omega mutant with the power to wrest apart atoms needed to remain in control.

Blowing the planet apart in the midst of a night terror didn't appeal to him.

Sometimes he wondered if immortals could outlive their nightmares eventually. Or maybe, even if the old ones faded into distant memory, there would always be new ones to take their place. He wasn't cruel enough to ask Logan.

He stroked his hand through his companion's sandy hair absently.

Sleep wasn't coming easily tonight. His mind was too busy, his emotions too unsettled by the visitors from outside the Interdict. He'd never hated humans, not all of them, not even after the Gene Wars. They'd been stupid and selfish and short-sighted, but then he'd been all those things himself more than once. Thus his voice had been the one that shifted the balance between Erik and Jean, that counseled for mercy after Second Denver. Yet he found the presence of humans, baselines, plain old Homo sapiens, within Genosha deeply disturbing.

He didn't think he was the only one.

Somewhere above, he felt Jean light up the night like a nuclear fireball, her power brushing across his in a rush. His power answered, wakening and expanding past the room, the Citadel, and beyond Genosha's confines.

Once, years before the Gene Wars, even before he joined the X-Men, he had had his power damped to Alpha level. It had been a deal with the devil that left him with blood on his hands and an indelible stain on his soul. He had even burnt himself out more than once only to have his strength return greater then ever.

Ultimately, he had been forced to learn such precise control that he had refined his abilities into something approaching the attributes of a god. Chaos theory and quantum physics met within the variable solutions between potential and actual energy, every possibility existing as a choice within the net of his consciousness. He no longer merely generated his power, using it within those limits. Now he existed as that power, an elemental avatar of both movement and stillness.

Loosed, his awareness moved deeper, encompassing every molecule of the planet, until he was aware of the motion of both primary and then satellite, of circles within circles: planet around its axis, moon around planet, electron around neutron. Within the eye of his element he experienced the precession of Earth around the sun, of Sol spinning around its center. He felt moons and asteroids and planets upon the ecliptic, each of them circling the center, even as some maintained their own rotations. The solar system itself moved along the edge of their great spiraling galaxy, and even it was only one more dancer within the Universe's pavane.

As always, his own consciousness threatened to dissolve into the endless, vibrating, circling expansion. But the shifting of the body next to his and then the sudden quiet of Jean recalling the Phoenix within her snapped him back to existence as a living, breathing, feeling body. With a small gasp, half relief, half regret, he wrapped himself close round his lover.

"Um, Rems," Bobby murmured drowsily.

"Go back to sleep," he said.

Bobby wiggled and opened shrewd blue eyes. "You haven't slept at all," he accused, but softly. They had been together a long time and he understood Remy as well as anyone other than Jean or Magnus could. Bobby's power could have made him an Omega, if he'd pushed, but he'd seen the cost Magnus and Jean and Remy paid, and declined. He had no desire for that sort of power or responsibility. Instead, he shared his life with a man who wasn't a god only because he didn't choose to be called one.

"Non," Remy admitted. A smile twitched at his mouth. "Jeannie just let the Phoenix out to stretch and open up its wings. Lit up the whole city."

"Lit up your powers too, I bet," Bobby said. He stroked Remy's shoulder, feeling the residual tingle of power caught within pale gold skin and lithe muscle. Remy's empathy let him know exactly how good that felt to his partner and he continued the caress.

Remy leaned into Bobby's touch, enjoying it shamelessly.

"She don't like the Normals coming here," he murmured. He slid his hand down Bobby's smooth back and up again, just because he could. "Makes her restless, I think." His hand stilled and his gaze went unfocused. "Too many memories gettin' stirred up."

Bobby pulled him close.

"They're never going to hurt us again. You hear me?" he said fiercely. "We won't let them. I won't let them. "

Remy nodded.

"Won't let nothin' happen to you either, cher," he promised. "Tear the world down first, I swear."

~And put out the sun,~ came Jean's telepathic promise.

Erik's mind woke within their shared gestalt, called by the connection between the two of them. ~Eliminating the enemy would be more than sufficient, fierce ones, though even I prefer that it not become necessary.~

"Tell Jeannie and Mags to take a hike, okay?" Bobby growled. He had learned to recognize when the other Omegas activated the psi-link binding them. He kissed Remy and smiled. "I want you to myself right now. If we're not going to sleep, we might as well have some fun."

Remy let the others 'hear' Bobby and they withdrew gracefully.

Hammer Bay
Private Residence

Kitty saw the fiery outline fill the sky and closed her eyes in time to save them from the flare. She and Jules were eating a late dinner out on the patio. She turned her face away from the hot wind that followed and laid her hand over her glass of ice tea.

"The natives are restless tonight," Jules commented. The brutal light had etched a harshness in her features that matched her voice. The years had made Jubilation Lee cynical and it showed. Kitty remembered her when she wasn't.

"Blowing off steam after spending all day doing the meet and greet at the Citadel," Kitty said.

She picked desultorily at the poached fish on her plate. She'd never bothered much with following an Orthodox menu, but Jules always made an effort not to serve anything offensive. Not that it was difficult. Food was plentiful in Genosha; there was little hunger or poverty.

"Glad I didn't have to be there long."

Jules knocked back a slug of her single nightly rum and coke. As usual, the taste made her grimace. For years Kitty had thought she didn't like the alcohol, only to learn that it was the taste of the ersatz Coca-Cola manufactured in Genosha that Jules found distasteful. She chuckled now. Jules hadn't been half thrilled when they'd heard the Interdict would be modified and Norms brought into Genosha to begin political talks.

"Maybe if trade opens up again, someone will get a license to market real Coke here again," she said.

"Too much to hope for," Jules replied sourly.

"Oh cheer up," Kitty said. "It's not that bad."

"You think so? Hah. You were at the formal dinner at the Citadel, right?" Jules stabbed a fish tipped fork at Kitty. "Sure you were. You always could pass. No one wants to spook the flatscans by bringing some of the more outré members of Genoshan society."

"And that bothers you."

Jules stubbornly ate instead of answering for several minutes. Finally she set her fork down and sat forward, elbows planted on either side of her plate, chin on her folded hands. "It bothers me. It all bothers me. I don't want to sound prejudiced, Kit, but I still really hate them. In the camps, they made us dig mass graves with our bare hands. You never stood at the edge of a great, reeking hole, knowing it would be your grave too. There was always clay under my fingernails and in my hair, I swear I could taste it, like I'd already been buried."

Kitty swallowed hard. Her own ancestors had endured in places like Auschwitz and Dachau and Treblinka. It wasn't supposed to happen again. She'd visited the Holocaust Memorial once. She'd stood at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. The world had seen evil well before the Gene Wars. But her own country had decided it was all right to commit those horrors again, because mutants weren't human, just as Hitler had declared Jews weren't.

Never once had she regretted her choice to join Magneto just before the CMRA passed, before the Gene Wars even began. But consequently, she'd already been out of the country when the Scouring began. She'd been with Gambit's Striker Unit at First Denver, but she and Pete had been recalled to Europe before the last day. She hadn't lived through the long retreat or suffered in the aftermath the way Jubilee had. She'd never known life in one of the camps.

Jules had and it had hardened her. The SoCal mallrat had endured the horrors and the marks were always with her: the binary code tattoo, the scars from the inhibitor collar, and the memories inside.

First Denver had been the end of the innocence for them all, in more ways than any of them could have guessed then. It had marked full scale biowarfare against mutants and an internal betrayal that when eventually revealed marked the end of all their old loyalties. The schism between those who believed in peaceful co-existence and those who believed more and more that it was us or them had finally closed after Second Denver, when the Three proposed and created the Interdict.

Now the Interdict was broken.

Small wonder Jules was upset.

Now the Phoenix hovered like a fiery herald above the Citadel's tower. The power spike must have registered as far out as Pluto.

Kitty's phase ability pulsed to life, threatening to render her insubstantial as a ghost, and through it she felt the remaining Two rouse. Compasses would be spinning madly, electronics protesting, iron heavy objects shivering under the lash of Magneto's power. Looking to the east, where the horizon met the waters of Indian Ocean, the Barrier glowed brilliant against the darkness, rising up and up into the atmosphere and arching over the island nation, still refusing the rest of the world entrance to Genosha.

Erik Magnus Lehnsherr was awake.

Gambit's signature was subtler, a soft shiver in the air, a faint tingle of energy smoking off static objects, the palest of glows everywhere. Anyone on Genosha would recognize it though and know the danger inherent was just as great as the others should he loose the reins of power. It felt like a ringing deep in her bones and grew in intensity for several minutes then snapped off, to Kitty's great relief.

She looked at Jules, noticing the kaleidoscopic lights flickering in her normally blue eyes. "Every mutant alive must have felt them," she said.

Jules looked grim. In the distance a loud boom sounded in the training houses. The green tinted explosion was bright enough to show over the city lights with the Phoenix' withdrawal. Power called to power and some young mutant had lost control in the aftermath of the massive, three pronged power spike.

"Hope whoever it was got to a shielded sanctuary," Jules said, looking that way. Her cell began ringing and she fished it out of the jacket draped over the back of her chair. She activated it and barked, "Lee here," then listened, frowning.

Kitty sighed and began cleaning up the dishes. She could guess what came next. Whenever Jules got a call this late it meant work. Jules was intent on her phone call.

She supposed they should have expected it. The tension in the city had been growing for days. Regular crime for profit had dropped but domestic violence and assaults, powered and unpowered, were up. There had been protests and demonstrations when news of the UN delegation's impending arrival aired. The people were unsure of what to think. Most of them were afraid of the world outside the Barrier, though a significant proportion were chafing to reach beyond the island's confines. When mutants, especially Alphas, were disturbed, things often went bang.

Jules snapped her cell closed. She clipped it to her belt, next to the holstered regulation plasma pistol and her badge. She pulled on her jacket.

"That was Numbskull," she declared. "Someone just found a hooker gutted just off Magda Square. Gutted and half melted, so they want me down there."

"Too much information, Lee," Kitty said. She walked around the table and hugged her friend close. "I know you're worried, but we just have to make do," she said into the short black hair hiding Jule's ear. "Erik and Jean and Remy are strong and smart enough to handle anything the Norms throw at us. We're not alone."

Jules hugged her back.

"I know."

A half smile graced her face.

"Logan and the rest of us ain't nothin' to sneeze at either," Jules said. Her cell shrilled again. She snarled at it wordlessly, reminding Kitty of their mentor. "Shit. It's gonna be like the fuckin' full moon out there tonight."

Kitty laughed and said, "Go."

Jules nodded.

"Yeah, sorry to leave the clean up on dinner, but you know duty calls."

"No problem," Kitty replied with a laugh and a wave.

Jules tromped out, muttering into her cell again.

Kitty stared out at the Barrier, now quiescent again, and wondered when it would drop. Change was coming again. She hoped it would be for the better this time.

Yield

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:49:39 GMT

14: Babylon On Fire

AD 2005, December 29
Africa
Gene Nation village

Wolverine slashed his claws through another control cable, sending the Sentinel into a mad spin. He leaped off it as it crashed into the earth. A cloud of choking yellowish dirt rose into the air as the metallic robot impacted. For an instant, he was blinded, deafened by the constant din of battle, his nose assaulted with the reek of bloody death, burning, and superheated metals.

Lightning cracked searing white through the air, directed by Storm and echoed by plasma fire from the Sentinels and the distinct sound of Gambit's trademark playing cards exploding as they hit and Cyke's optic blast. The hair on his arms had singed off from all the stray voltage flying around. Someone was yelling something he couldn't understand.

Overhead two Sentinels flew straight at each other, despite firing thrusters that should have directed them. One was caught in the grip of Jean's telekinesis. The other had been tossed at top speed by Rogue; she was using the superstrength and invulnerability that she'd drained from Carol Danvers years before all out. The rebel yell she let out cut through the cacophony before it was lost too. She hit another Sentinel like a high speed battering ram.

Bishop carelessly absorbed the plasma fire from the Sentinels, channeling and firing it back. Then he pulled his favorite 'big ass' gun out and began shooting. His face had set into a snarl that wrinkled the black M tattooed over the left side of his face.

Wolverine stumbled over a hunk of burning flesh and sank to one knee. A quick, nauseating whiff assured him it was a goat and not one of the Gene Nation villagers.

Each time a Sentinel reconfigured to compensate for one of the team's powers, they switched or doubled on it, tasking the robot's processors and subroutines beyond their abilities to operate in real time. These were old Mark 3 versions of the Sentinels, not Primes; not many people were willing to let Phalanx-derived nanocybernetics rebuild them into program-dedicated killing machines — even if they did hate mutants. The failure of Project: Zero Tolerance and Bastion had seen a drastic reduction in the production of Prime Sentinels.

The sun shone unmercifully on the battleground. His breath sawed into his lungs and he felt every pound of the adamantium bonded to his bones. Sweat flicked away from him in a spray as he shook his head to clear it.

"Wolverine!" Cyclops shouted. "Down!"

He dove for the earth, rolling and coming to his feet in the tenuous cover of a mud-daubed hut that was still burning.

Cyclops fired at the Sentinel that had been targeting him. A simmering red beam of light lanced out from the visor he wore over his eyes and sliced through the robot's armor, triggering an internal explosion that tossed one of its arms directly through the chest of another.

Wolverine sprinted forward, vaulted into the air and sank his claws into the tottering machine. He scrambled up it like a cat going up someone's leg, then gouged out its optic receptors. He'd never admit it, but the Sentinels were just humanoid enough that doing that bugged him on some deep level.

Didn't stop him, but sometimes the way the things reacted to being taken down got a little too close to human. They were aware enough to know when they were being taken apart.

Sparks spat and a bolt of electricity found its way up his claws and sizzled through his skeleton. Made his whole body jerk for a second. Lucky adamantium was such a lousy conductor or it would have been worse. He involuntarily pulled the claws back in and that broke the connection.

The Sentinel was falling now and he began looking for a good place to hop off. Its shadow darkened the ground beneath it. He caught sight of a brown duster billowing as Gambit danced his way through the fight.

No time to enjoy watching the way the kid threw himself into creating mayhem, not like the Danger Room practice sessions, when a man could appreciate the sheer artistry of Gambit's moves. Besides, he wasn't laughing his way through this one. He was moving even faster than usual, eschewing some of his flashier style and just doing the job. Putting a little more bang into each charged card he flipped out and keeping his mouth shut. That long, usually smiling mouth set in a grim line.

Wolverine sort of missed the smart ass commentary.

They were all keeping quieter than usual, not even indulging in their usual black humor. There was nothing to laugh about here.

He started to yell a warning to Gambit that the Sentinel was coming down. Gambit cartwheeled away without looking. Maybe he felt the robot's shadow cross over him. Even the cartwheel wasn't for show this time. He came to his feet with his hands full of stones he charged and threw. There was a reason they never let him pitch in the team baseball games. The kid had a better arm and better aim than any major league pitcher alive.

The rocks hit with devastating force, blowing the chest right out of the sixth and last Sentinel. Shrapnel flew everywhere. Lightning strikes followed, frying the remains of the toppled robots until there wasn't enough left to salvage as more than raw, melted metal. No way any of them were going to reboot and come back after the X-Men this time.

Wolverine leaped off the Sentinel he'd disabled at the last second before it hit the ground. He hit the ground running and got the hell out of Dodge while the energy wielders let loose with a little overkill: Cyclops and Bishop zapping the Sentinel's armored body into unrecognizable junk.

Storm floated down out of the sky, looking very much like the goddess she'd once been worshipped as. Hot winds still whipped her white hair into a tangled cloud. She looked regal and still furious.

They all were, but the slaughter affected Storm worse than any of them. The Gene Nation colony near her old African village had been her solution to the problem of what to do with the deformed and bitter descendents of the Morlocks. She still saw them as her responsibility. Their deaths were her failure in her eyes.

Wolverine watched her wrap her arms around her torso as she looked around.

"Rogue," Cyclops called. "Get back to the Blackbird and let the rest of the team know what's happened here."

She took one wild look around the wrecked village and took off, obviously grateful to get away and do anything.

Gambit looked after her then shook his head, turning away. His coat was a shredded mess, one arm charred black from a near miss. He shrugged it off and let it drop in the dirt, something Wolverine had never seen him do before.

Bishop walked back toward them, gun balanced on his shoulder, silhouetted against the pale African sky. Dust puffed around his boots. His head swiveled, watching for any new threats.

Phoenix followed, going straight Cyclops' side. Her hand on his back seemed to focus their leader again. A sharp stab of light reflected off the metal frame of his visor as he looked around.

Wolverine pulled in a deep breath and regretted it. The reek was getting thicker and the quiet after the battle served as a reminder that this place was dead now. All that was left was wreckage and carrion. When he tipped his head back he could pick out the slow circling specks of the gathering vultures high in the sky.

"Wolverine, you and Phoenix, check for survivors," Cyclops directed. His voice cracked on the last word.

Phoenix closed her eyes to concentrate on a psionic scan for any minds, while Wolverine prowled through the remains of the village, stretching his enhanced senses to the utmost, hoping for the scent of someone living or a heartbeat and the sound of lungs. The only ones he detected were his own team-mates.

Gambit stalked after him, brow creased. Wolverine figured he was doing his own psi-thing. He could smell the anger and pain and guilt rolling off the man, masking any hint of the attraction Gambit usually exuded. Even his movements were stiffer than usual.

He opened his mouth to growl at him for following him when it hit him. If Storm was seeing the Mutant Massacre rewritten in the sun instead of the New York subway tunnels, then so was Gambit. Did his gut ache where Sabretooth had sliced him open? The scars were well healed before Gambit joined the X-Men, four thin pale lines arching across the kid's flat belly, the fifth at a slight angle dragging over a sharp hipbone. They showed up when Gambit had been in the shower and was flushed; Wolverine knew Creed's claw marks, but he'd stayed quiet. A man's past should be left alone unless it threatened the team. Gambit had made no bones about knowing Sabretooth and hating him. They hadn't needed to know why, then thought it was the Notre Dame thing, until Gambit's part in the Massacre came out.

Whatever Gambit's sins, he wasn't to blame for this.

He wouldn't take his own rage out on the other man.

With a growl of frustration and fury that escalated into a howl, Wolverine snapped his claws out and ran them through a wattle and daub wall, shredding it with several blows. He didn't stop until his arms ached with exertion.

Gambit stood just out of reach. He looked relaxed until Wolverine noticed the pebble caught between two long fingers, glowing almost fuchsia with the charge fed into it.

He stepped back with a last growl and shook himself. "Ain't nothing left, Cajun."

The pebble dimmed back to dull stone, but stayed in Gambit's hand.

"Feel better, mon ami?"

"Fuck all's gonna make me feel better."

Gambit cocked his head then nodded. His shoulders slumped faintly.

They looked around, working in tandem now, but without any expectation of finding anyone.

The Morlock village had been laid out in a circle. The buildings were crowded closer together than native Africans would have built. The Morlocks hadn't been used to open skies and space. They'd built a high wall around everything topped with thorns and sharpened stakes. It had kept intruders and predators out, but hadn't given the Sentinels a second's pause.

Despite the kill or be killed lessons the Morlock survivors had learned in the pocket dimension Mikhail Rasputin had kept them in, they hadn't had a chance against the mutant hunting robots. They'd given up fighting to live peacefully in their small colony far from the world's hysteria over the mutant dilemma.

The bodies were everywhere. Thrown down like garbage, in broken piles and scattered pieces, everything they'd ever been reduced to food for maggots. Mutant threat: neutralized.

They'd already been in the Blackbird when it happened, flying cloaked at twice the speed of sound toward Africa, thanks to Psylocke's precog warning that something would happen there.

Phoenix had gasped an hour into the flight. Gambit flinched, then sat forward, dangling his hands between his knees. "Too late," he had muttered, but Wolverine had already guessed from the tears slipping down Jean's cheeks.

The villagers' surprise and growing terror had broadcast on the Astral Plane. The lights of their minds had winked out. Once more, the X-Men were on clean up duty, too late to save anyone.

The frustration ate at Wolverine. They were always reacting.

Superheroes couldn't win. It was lose/lose. No way to undo a wrong already done and if they stepped in to stop a villain before that, they became wrong-doers themselves.

The sight that greeted them on their arrival convinced Wolverine it might be worth it to step over the line.

Smoke, black columns of it twisting into the air, had been their first sight as Cyclops banked the Blackbird toward the site of the village. Then the towering figures of the Sentinels, still busily smashing the remains. Cyke had nearly stalled the 'bird, letting the flyers each grab someone and deplane on the spot. Rogue carried Gambit toward the earth, while Storm buoyed Bishop on her hastily summoned winds and Jean held Wolverine in a TK bubble with her.

Then they'd been in it, going after the Sentinels all out. Cyclops joined the fight sometime after landing the Blackbird.

They'd needed to take out the Sentinels, certainly, but destroying a bunch of overgrown tincans also let them cut loose all the fury seething inside them. It just didn't do anything for the guilt.

He shifted a chunk of shattered wood and uncovered another body.

After a moment, he identified the remains as Boost, then realized the limbs were tangled with another's he didn't know at all.

"Shit," he hissed.

Plasma fire had melted their flesh together in a seared black ruin pierced with broken bone. A fat bodied fly, black and iridescent green, crawled over the raw tissue.

He let the chunk of wood in his hand fall and turned away.

Gambit's head hung. His hands were curled into fists. Another fly tried to land on him and he twitched it away unconsciously. His eyes were glued to something in the dirt at his feet.

Wolverine picked his way over to the other man's side then stared down too.

Gambit knelt and brushed the dirt away from the half-buried piece of metal painted with an insignia. He didn't touch it.

Two letters still showed, red over a background of white stars on blue.

Wolverine crouched and sniffed. He filtered out everything but the scents still adhering to what looked like part of the casing to a communications headset.

"Human."

Gambit stared at him, hellfire eyes and hunter's patience, still and silent, waiting for more. Wolverine gave it to him.

"Male. Between thirty and thirty-five, meat-eater, probably American." He picked up the broken casing, held it to his face and scented it again. Cologne, soap, sweat, adrenaline and testosterone, hydrocarbon fuel residue from diesel exhaust, gun oil, cordite, and ozone tickled his nose.

He stood and began casting for more clues. Gambit stayed just behind and to the side of him, not speaking. He circled out beyond the splintered, slowly burning fence-wall and found what he'd expected. Tire tracks. Boot tracks. The scent from the headset mingled with others. All fading on the wind, almost lost in the reek of death.

He knelt beside one set of Humvee tracks and stared out across the veldt. Even he couldn't follow them across the African plains. The grasslands looked eerily empty; the animals had fled from the noise of battle.

Gambit read the tracks too. He wasn't mountain man material by a longshot, but he was observant and fast. He'd watched and picked up things from Wolverine. Sliding through topflight security required the same sort of attention to the tiny details that living in the wild did.

"Forward observers?"

"Spotters. Targeted the place for the Sentinels," Wolverine said.

Gambit flinched.

"It ain't the same, LeBeau," he snapped. "These bastards knew exactly what they were doing." He used Gambit's name to emphasize that he meant it. This cut too close to the bone for the other man. Leading the Marauders into the Morlock tunnels had damned Gambit in his own eyes as well as many others.

Wolverine thought the Mutant Massacre had been what saved Remy LeBeau's soul. The horror had wakened the man's conscience and sent him running from Sinister and the killers he'd been working beside. If he hadn't been lied to he wouldn't have turned on them. He might have stayed and become steadily more inured to the things Sinister asked of him, until he became worse than any of them.

"Bastards," he said again with a grunt as he stood up once more.

Gambit nodded.

"Friends of Humanity."

He added an obscene gesture Wolverine agreed with.

"We'd better get back and tell Cyke about that," he said, his eyes on the headset casing.

Wolverine grunted acknowledgement and they headed back to the center of the village.

Phoenix and Storm were gone when they reached it.

Cyclops turned toward them.

"I sent Storm back to the Blackbird with Jean," he said as they approached.

"Good idea."

"This ain't going to be easy for Stormy," Gambit added. He rubbed at his face, leaving a smear of soot along one high cheekbone. "Or any of us," he went on almost to himself. His head jerked up. "Mon Dieu, who's going to tell Marrow about this?"

Cyclops flinched. The already venomous ex-Morlock would blame Storm and Gambit . She would blame all the X-Men. She would be even more homicidal than usual. Keeping her from going after the 'pretty-pretty upworlders' would be a Herculean task. All three of them knew it had been a lucky fluke she'd been out of the mansion with Sam when Psylocke had her vision.

"Wolverine — "

"Hell no."

Gambit walked away without a word. He stopped within earshot, but kept his back to them.

"Don't even think about asking him to do it, Cyke."

Cyclops nodded.

"Who do you suggest then?"

With a snort, Wolverine said, "Stick her in the Danger Room, lock it down, and let Charlie tell her telepathically. Couple years from now, when she calms down, we can let her out."

"Tempting."

Neither of them had the energy or the will to keep up any kind of banter. Silence set in. The hot, dust-ridden wind Storm had summoned had dissipated into a thing of sporadic gusts that whispered and moaned through broken walls and pieces of Sentinel armor.

Wolverine stirred when another fly landed on him.

"Where's Bish?"

"Walking the perimeter."

"About that … the Cajun and me found something you better see." He lifted his voice. "Gambit, get over here."

Gambit stiffened but started to turn. He paused though and stalked over to whatever had caught his eye. Nothing about him indicated it might be a threat. Wolverine ignored him.

He held up the broken headset casing.

"We found this and I tracked it back to a slug of tire tracks outside the village."

"FOH?"

" Ouai," Gambit murmured as he joined them. He had something in his hands now too. It chilled Wolverine when he recognized what Gambit had picked up. It was a child's rag doll, ripped and leaking its stuffing.

"Explains the second rate Sentinels," Cyclops said absently. "Someone must have back channeled the manufacturing specs to them."

He looked around and winced. "We'll have to alert the local authorities."

Wolverine shook his head. "Ain't no point, Cyke."

"Then what the hell do we do!?" Cyclops shouted at him.

"Find something to dig with and start burying the bodies," Gambit said tonelessly. His knuckles were white on the stained, dirty doll.

He was right. The scavengers would start moving in come dusk. By then the swarms of flies would have laid their eggs. In the heat, if the bodies were left long the job would be a thousand times worse.

Cyclops looked ready to gag. Instead he straightened his shoulders.

"All right. We have to do this as fast as possible. Gambit — "

"I can blow a hole in the ground."

The dull sound of Gambit's normally carefree voice told its own story.

"We'll need two," Cyclops said decisively. "I want to cover up the Sentinels too. Let those bastards wonder what happened here after they left."

Gambit nodded.

"Wolverine, I'll need your help. We'll start gathering the bodies."

You couldn't accuse Cyke of ever sticking anyone with a job worse than what he was willing to take on himself.

They labored through the rest of the afternoon. Bishop joined them, pulling bodies out of the wreckage. Rogue took to the air and kept overwatch, while Jean stayed with Storm. Later, it took Rogue's strength to drag the pieces of the Sentinels into the deep, ugly hole Gambit had provided.

It took all of them, even Storm, to lay the dead into the mass grave. Gambit and Bishop went down in it and laid the bodies out with a terrible sort of gentleness.

Jean used her telekinesis to shift the earth over the grave.

Storm summoned an unseasonal rain to wash the remains of the village clean and douse the still lingering flames. The fragmenting clouds gave the sunset a louring look, as though the sky had been stained by darkness and blood.

They were dirt and blood-stained, hollow-eyed and weary to the bone when they were through. Storm's rain soaked them. The water slid down their faces as though she cried for all of them.

Gambit set the doll on the grave.

"This is it, homme," he said softly. "This is what they gonna do to all of us."

Yield

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:42:03 GMT

13: They Call It Democracy

AD 2227, January 19
Hammer Bay
The Citadel

Benjamin Aiken decided that Genosha had a color.

Red.

Red united the Triune.

Magneto's colors were crimson and imperial purple. Gambit's were crimson and black. Phoenix wore crimson and gold and green. The X sigil that symbolized the country: black over red. The heavy draperies and upholstery of the Citadel, the armor and cloaks and masks of the guards, all red.

Driving from the UN compound to the Citadel to attend the formal banquet welcoming him to Genosha, he saw a vast field of scarlet poppies and green grass in the distance. A cemetery, his driver told him, one of the oldest.

The dark-haired woman who had greeted and accompanied the delegation on their arrival met him at the door.

Aiken wracked his brain trying to remember how she'd introduced herself then and realized she hadn't. She had merely identified herself as a Deputy of the Triune. He did remember Magneto referring to her as Transit and her spectacular (to him) exit once he had been delivered.

"Ambassador Aiken," she greeted him.

"Miss … Transit?" he said. "It's delightful to meet you again."

She smiled and placed her hand on the arm he gallantly offered as they walked up the steps into the Citadel entrance hall.

"Transit is my work name, chosen to reflect my mutant ability and my own personality," she said. "We don't use honorifics with work names." She gave him a mischievous look. "It's not 'Lord' Magneto. Just Magneto. But if that makes you uncomfortable, feel free to refer to me as Claire or Miss Moonstar."

She led him forward to where the Triune stood with several other formally dressed individuals.

The Triune wore ornate robes of silks and velvets quilted and intricately embellished by threads of gold and silver and platinum. Gemstones glittered amongst the embroidery of metal. The cloth cascaded from their shoulders and pooled on the mirrored black marble floors of the Citadel's Great Hall. Beneath the robes, glimpsed when they shifted, liquid shining body armor molded to their forms like second skins.

"Ambassador Aiken," Magneto greeted him. "I hope you will enjoy this evening. Oralux has agreed to grace us with a performance after the dinner."

"I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with the artist, but I'm confident I will enjoy it," Aiken replied.

Phoenix stood between Magneto and a squat, black-haired man wearing a deep blue silk suit. Black sideburns flared down his face to his jaw, framing a hard visage. The man's head barely reached Phoenix' shoulders, but his heavily muscled frame and feral blue eyes negated any humorous comparison. Beside him stood a sleek beauty in solid black that made her unnaturally milky skin almost glow. A black diamond tattoo covered one eye. Platinum and amethyst armlets and bracelets glittered on her arms.

"Allow me to introduce you to Wolverine and Domino," Magneto said. "Respectively, Securidat Prime and Defense Prime."

Wolverine grunted at him, while Domino bestowed a seductive smile on him and offered her hand. Aiken kissed it.

"You'll be amazed by what Oralux does with light and sound," Domino told him.

"I look forward to it."

On Magneto's other side, Gambit had his head bent, speaking quietly with the young appearing man beside him.

He caught Aiken's gaze and returned it. The young man turned. He wore ice-blue and gray decorated with platinum. His blue eyes echoed the cold look of dislike on his face when he saw Aiken.

"Ambassador," Gambit drawled, "this is my partner, Prime Ice."

"A pleasure to meet you," Aiken lied. He held out his hand. "Benjamin Aiken."

Frost was literally forming on Ice's hair and hands. Aiken felt grateful the man didn't accept his hand. After a long moment of staring at it, Ice touched Gambit's arm then strode away

Gambit shrugged at Aiken.

"I take it Prime Ice was not in favor of contact between your people and humans?" Aiken asked.

Gambit chuckled. "He holds a grudge." Inhuman eyes caught Aiken's and held them.

"Do you?"

"Not many diplomats would ask that direct a question."

"Prevarication becomes useless when faced with telepaths, I suspect."

One auburn brow rose and a spark of interest and respect lit Gambit's expression. "I notice you don't have the psi-blocker with you."

"Aside from provoking you into frying its circuits again, I realize it would be rather insulting."

That seemed to please Gambit. Phoenix joined them and insisted they mingle, a much friendlier Phoenix than he'd been introduced to originally, introducing Aiken to a litany of mutants.

He met the lovely Shadowcat again, wearing deep blue and in the company of a tall Asian woman with startling blue eyes dressed in a scarlet ao dai. She had the hardest expression he'd seen since meeting Wolverine, which seemed incongruous with her name: Jubilee. She headed the Homicide Division of the Hammer Bay Police Department.

Shadowcat led him to the head of the McCoy Foundation, Nathan McCoy, a geneticist with indigo skin, long canines, and tufts of fur at the tips of his mobile, pointed ears.

"I'll give you a tour of Big Blue if you give me a gene sample," McCoy offered quite seriously.

Next came several Primes, who Aiken realized were either elected members of the Genoshan Congress or members of the Alphanate, the assembly of alpha mutants. The Alphas seemed to care little for using titles, he noticed, instead preferring their public or war names, while the betas and gammas used birth names more often. Indeed, he was learning that in Genosha that use of a single name almost always denoted an alpha.

As the evening progressed, Aiken noticed how many variations the Genoshans exhibited while retaining a mostly hominid structure.

Prime Compass had mustard green skin. At first, Aiken thought the man had darker green dreadlocks, but they moved. Compass' head was covered with tentacles the diameter of a thumb and his 'hands' were heavier tentacles clumped together. The rubbery, boneless feel of them sent a shudder through Aiken after he shook hands.

At some point, he was left in the company of a tall, brown haired man introduced as Prime Sharps, who had brown eyes and red pupils, and a lovely blonde called Scanner. Scanner, he gathered, was a telepath, but it was Sharps' deference to her that intrigued Aiken. He eventually realized that she must be one of the Gene War survivors that were referred to as the Twenty Constants.

Dinner consisted of modified French-Indian-Asian cuisine so superior Aiken revised his opinion and decided contact between Genosha and the world would be worth it just for their food. Conversation ranged from classic literature and philosophy to a local soccer league and the difficulties of transporting heavy equipment into orbit. Magneto expressed interest in the orbital elevator, while a blond man called Slipstream explained that teleporters tended to have problems with inorganics and though the artificial teleport technology didn't, it required a nearly prohibitive exchange of energy for high volume transports, though mass didn't make much difference. Strictly a matter of transport area circumference according to Genosha's best scientists.

That discussion confirmed Aiken's suspicion that Genosha's technology and science outstripped the rest of the world.

A whirl of faces, many surreally beautiful, amid the glitter and light and music that followed, like a conclave of the Sidhe, were introduced: Phantazia, Prime Fugue, a historian named Westfall Scribe, Raindance, Surcease, Milan, Northstar, Prime Scope, Riptide, and finally, Mystique. Dancing with her, Aiken sensed a spirit more predatory than the girl with tiger stripes and fangs he'd met earlier.

"Confused?" she asked.

"Overwhelmed," Aiken said lightly. "What is it you do again?"

The pretty brunette in his arms melted into blue skin and yellow eyes, long blood-red hair, though the body remained svelte and female. He almost stumbled but maintained. She smiled at him.

"Very good."

"Interesting, but I meant what do you do?"

She laughed and melted back into the brunette.

"Why bother?" he asked.

"It matches my outfit better."

They spun around the dance floor. He saw his attaché Heinz waltzing with Rebecca Pryde and Northstar dancing with Phoenix while Gambit glided with his arms around a delicate beauty Aiken hadn't met.

"You never answered my question."

Mystique laughed.

"Persistent. A good quality in a foreign services officer."

She curled one hand against the nape of Aiken's neck.

"That's how I got this post."

"Internal Intelligence, Ministry of Defense," she said. "I report to Domino."

"So you would be in a position to tell me what people really think about ending the Interdict."

Her fingers stroked the bare skin between his hairline and his collar.

"I could."

"Will you?"

"Will you tell me what the average human Out There thinks in exchange?"

She ran her tongue over her full upper lip in an undeniably erotic display.

"Which side are you on?"

Mystique smiled brilliantly.

"Mine."

"Uninformative."

"How do you know I won't lie?"

"A problem we share."

They danced silently for another measure.

"I want the Interdict undone and the Barrier lowered," Mystique said. "I want to be free again."

Aiken felt a little puzzled. Mystique was as free as anyone in Genoshan society, which seemed on the surface very free and affluent.

Mystique's eyes gleamed yellow again.

"I've been very good for a very long time, you see, Ambassador. We all have."

"And without the Interdict you wouldn't have to be good?" He smiled, but inside he shivered.

"It was never meant as a permanent solution," she said. "They — " her gesture encompassed Magneto, Gambit and Phoenix, " — thought that separation was better than annihilation."

"Well, if those were the choices …"

"Believe me, the Scourge could have been much worse."

"Worse?

Worse than Boulder wiped out by nuclear fire, he might have asked. Worse than the dirty fallout from the warheads that detonated in the upper atmosphere and poisoned the world for generations? Worse than hundreds of thousands of people who died on the last day of the wars?

The Scourge had wiped out the United States as an entity. Everyone in the government and the military had been reduced to mind-wiped idiots requiring constant care. Electromagnetic pulses had hammered the continent, while even the deepest shielded installations were hit with kinetic charges. The devastation had stretched from the east to the west coast, deep into Mexico and into the cities of Canada. Secret bases scattered over the globe had suffered the same destruction in the next few hours. Within a day, nothing had been left of the nation at war with mutant kind. North America had never really recovered; even hundreds of years later they were struggling to return to technological parity with the rest of the world. The population numbers were beginning to rise again, but it remained a land of empty cities and desolate wastes where battles had been fought on titanic scales.

"Much worse."

Mystique shrugged.

"Of course, mutants wouldn't have survived it either."

"Mutual assured destruction is a long outmoded attitude."

"No, it isn't."

"Was that a warning?"

"Of sorts."

"I get the feeling you really don't care much about humans."

"You're not a stupid man."

Mystique tipped her head back, always moving exactly with the music.

Soft light played through the dance floor. On a podium in the center, a slim woman sang for lack of a better word that encompassed one being generating the sound of several orchestras, a chorus, and a light show that seemed to play on mood and emotion along with everyone's senses.

Oralux, the promised performer.

"Why then? Why let us in?"

"To let us out," Mystique said. "To give all of our people choices again."

"I don't understand."

"No, how could you? Genosha … is a democracy on sufferance. As long as we need the Triune to maintain the Barrier, they are our real rulers. As long as Genosha is closed, its people will never grow beyond the vision of the Constant. They are too powerful."

"I can see that, but aren't you one of the Constant?"

Mystique looked briefly melancholy.

"It works both ways. We're trapped too."

The music ended to a round of applause. Aiken joined. Mystique gave him a sultry look. "We'll have to get together again, Ambassador."

"I'll look forward to it."

He looked around the ballroom, easily picking out the Constants from the rest of the attendees. They were the grave faced ones, the still points all others orbited around, drawn to each other by the weight of their experience.

They were as alien, he thought, to their own people as mutants were to humans. All that they saw now, would fall away and what would come after would pass too, while they alone stood witness with only each other to endure it.

Yield

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:34:32 GMT

12: Freight Train

AD 2005, November 10
United States
Austin, TX

"At three twenty-seven p.m. today, President Creed signed the Comprehensive Mutant Registration act into law."

"It's about time," Lisa muttered.

Jubilee looked over at her study partner. "What?"

Lisa gestured toward the TV playing in one corner of the rec hall. Several other students were watching it. "Someone did something about the genejokes. Don't they creep you out?"

She set her pen down and cocked her head, "No. Why should they?"

"Because they're not human. They're weird, filthy freaks," Lisa snapped. "I mean, some of them might look human, but they should never have been born. They're like nature's mistakes."

"I'll be sure to mention how you feel to Nolly," Jubilee said.

"Nolly?" Lisa looked confused.

"Yeah, your boyfriend? The guy who was born blind?" Jubilee leaned across the table. She had hold of her temper. Barely. But she wasn't frying the little bitch with a plasma burst or even socking her in the jaw. "I guess he should never have been born either. Nature made a big mistake with him, right?"

"That's different," Lisa protested. "Nolly's human."

"What makes him human, Lisa? Because he looks that way? Because he can't do anything you can't do? Are his parents human?" Jubilee ticked the examples off on her fingers, not caring that she'd caught the attention of several others in the room. "No, wait, I've got it. He's human if he can have kids with a human, right?"

She paused then smiled.

"That argument doesn't work either though, because mutants and humans have kids too. And you want to know something else? Sometimes mutants have non-mutant kids. How about that?"

Lisa's chin came up. "I don't care. I don't want the dirty things near me."

Jubilee shook her head, straight black hair flipping around her face. She wiped the strands out of her eyes.

"You're such a bigot, Lisa."

"Oh, fuck you, Lee. You act so high and mighty. You think you have to be Miss PC Liberal because you're a minority. You've got the Asian ethnic thing going. But I bet you'd be with the rest of us if one of those freaks tried to go school here."

"Wrongo," Jubilee snapped back. "And how do you know there aren't mutants going to school here? Have you got, like, some mutant version of gaydar?"

"No. That's why the President's right. Someone needs to keep track of them."

"So, if Nolly told you he was a mutant, what would you do?"

Lisa's lip curled up. "Besides puke?"

Jubilee nodded.

"Report him. Get his ass thrown out of this school," Lisa said promptly.

Jubilee looked around the onlookers listening in. "Well, what about you guys? What would you do if someone you knew turned out to be a mutant?"

"Beat the shit out of him," someone in the back said.

"Yeah."

"They're dangerous. I don't want any of 'em around me. They had that disease, didn't they?"

"I don't know …"

"Man, they're fucking freaks."

"The minister at our church says mutants are damned. He says they're Satan's spawn."

"Oh, I don't know. Have you seen those X-people on the evening news? Some of those babes are red-hot. I'd do 'em, even if they are mutants."

"That's because you're raving pervert, Tony. You'd fuck a ground squirrel if it held still long enough."

"So does anyone here even know a real mutant?"

"There was a girl in high school. She had gills. I heard she dropped out though. She's probably living in the East River now, hunh?"

Jubilee watched and listened, her essay for American Lit forgotten.

"There's a Friends of Humanity rally next week. We could go check it out. Anyone want come?"

"I'm there," Lisa said.

"You would be," Jubilee muttered.

"Why don't you come too, Lee?" Lisa taunted.

"Sure, I'll do that right after I shave my head and get that swastika tattoo," she replied.

"… footage shot from a sheriff's department helicopter of a confrontation between X-Factor and a group of superpowered terrorists calling themselves the New Mutant Liberation Front outside Bellington, North Dakota earlier today. Attempts to determine the nature of the government facility under attack by the NMLF were unsuccessful. Several citizens of nearby Bellington were more forthcoming, telling this reporter that the facility was a manufactory for the mutant hunting robots called Sentinels. When contacted, the Office of Mutant Liaisons offered no comment on the incident beyond acknowledging the presence of X-Factor, who were 'executing their official duties' while 'protecting government property.'"

United States
Westchester

The drop down holoscreen displayed Havok, Polaris, and Quicksilver. They were all still in uniform and looked the worse for wear. Polaris was picking at a tear in the arm of her outfit and a dark red contusion marked Havok's cheekbone. Quicksilver was slumped in a chair, not even drumming his fingertips, indicating exactly how exhausted the speedster was. In fact, Scott felt pretty sure Pietro had fallen asleep sitting up.

Scott grimaced at the sight of his brother and asked quietly, "How bad was it?"

Havok swiped a lank lock of blond hair back. His blue eyes were bloodshot.

"Pretty bad."

"But you're all okay?" Jean asked.

Polaris shrugged. "Good enough for government work."

"So is the NMLF sporting any familiar faces?"

"Locus, Dragoness, and Wildside were there," Havok said. "Random. Post. A girl we think is one X-Force ran across, but we're not sure."

Scott raised his eyebrows.

"Give me a name, maybe Cable can get something from Sam."

"Sure. She was imploding things, and I thought I remembered hearing that Warpath took off to Florida for a while with a mutant that did something like that. Risque? There's nothing in X-Factor's database, but we don't have a good relationship with X-Force."

Scott laughed.

"They don't tell us much either."

"Look, Scott, I want a hot shower and some liniment and a tall glass of something alcoholic," Havok said. "The best I'm going to get is the shower and a couple of aspirin. I've got a debriefing with Sikorsky in twenty minutes, then I have to write up a report on the incident. So can we wind this up?"

"Fine." Scott leaned forward. "Is it a Sentinel factory?"

Havok offered a tired smile.

"That would be classified, brother mine."

Wolverine, setting in the shadows at the other end of the conference table, snorted.

On the screen Polaris perked up from where she'd been slumping against Havok's shoulder. "Logan?"

"Yeah, darlin'?"

"Let's just say the official types hustled us out of there as fast as they could. I'll swear I spotted a couple of cooling towers hidden inside some scaffolding."

"So they were hiding something?" Scott said.

Wolverine chuckled.

"They're government, they've always got something to hide."

"Got that right, mon ami," Gambit commented.

Scott started. He hadn't even realized the thief was in the War Room. He must have followed Wolverine in. He just hadn't taken a seat, instead slouching against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans.

Jean was frowning. "Cooling towers?"

"For a nuclear plant maybe," Gambit added thoughtfully. His crimson eyes slitted. "Don't they need a dedicated power plant for manufacturing Sentinels?"

Scott nodded. "Yeah, they do."

Havok grinned. "Well, if I were you, I'd think about checking the place out. On the sly."

"Hmn," Scott said, smiling back. "I'll let you get to your paperwork, little brother."

"Wait," Gambit said. He walked forward into the light where the camera pickup would send his image to X-Factor's headquarters in Fall's Edge.

"Hey, Gambit," Polaris greeted him.

"Bonsoir ma doux," he replied with a twinkle in his eyes.

Polaris twirled a strand of green hair in her fingers and grinned at Gambit. She enjoyed his flirting and charm and he enjoyed entertaining her almost as much as he did irritating Scott or Alex. A win-win situation, because Lorna also knew Gambit wouldn't take her seriously the way someone like Bobby might.

"The cooling towers you saw, chere, were they finished or still under construction?"

"Why would it matter?" Havok asked irritably.

Gambit's eyebrows shot up. "Not all of us can absorb the power from a runaway reactor, homme. Be nice to know before we stroll in there if we can blow the place up or not, mais oui."

"One was still under construction, Gambit," Polaris told him.

"Thanks, chere."

Scott cut the connection a second before Havok could snarl something at Gambit.

"Can you get in?" he asked the thief.

"Worry more about getting out, me." Gambit shrugged. "Get in, get out, that I can do. Take the place down, probably. Do it without anyone knowing the X-Men been there, that's something else."

Scott thought about it.

"The only thing that matters is that you don't kill anyone doing it."

Gambit rolled his eyes.

"You want me to evacuate the place before I blow it?"

"Exactly."

"You know, One-Eye, one of these days this kind of crap is going to get one of us dead," Wolverine said.

Scott clenched his jaw. "X-Men don't kill."

Wolverine laughed.

"Deliberately," Scott was forced to admit. There had been casualties among the collateral damage that went with mutants battling other mutants or anti-mutant militias. But acknowledging that meant seeing how unlikely it was that they would ever achieve the Professor's dream.

He lived in fear of the day that trying to uphold all of their principles clashed so hard with reality that one of them died because of it. They'd had their casualties, lost team members and friends, but not because they refused to kill.

Not yet.

He didn't know what the teams would do when it happened. He hoped they would be able to hold it together and see it as another sort of sacrifice. He was afraid it would be what broke them.

"I want you to take a team and check it out," he told Gambit. "If it is a Sentinel factory, get the people out and destroy it. If it isn't … try to find out what it is without drawing any attention."

Gambit nodded.

"Who ya takin, Cajun?" Wolverine asked.

"You, my Stormy, Psylocke and T-Bird."

"Not Rogue?"

"I think Raven forgot to teach that girl how to be quiet." Gambit sighed. "Either that or she just won't use what she learned 'cause it reminds her of who she used to be."

Scott turned to his very quiet wife. "Jean?"

"I'll get them down here," she said.

He heard her mind-voice through the link between them, summoning Ororo, Betsy and Neal.

Gambit had a topographic map of the Bellingham area on the holo display already. Scott decided to sit back and watch him brief and plan the mission. Gambit had done a good job of leading in Russia according to Cable and Jean. Scott was a little curious to watch him work.

"In New Genosha, Premier Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, the mutant known as Magneto, condemned the United States, declaring that President Creed had taken the first steps toward genocide, in an address broadcast globally."

Bobby stretched out on the couch and sighed as he tried to relax the muscles in his back. Someday they were all going to mutiny against Scott and his sadistic five a.m. practice sessions in the Danger Room. What did he think, that they had enlisted in the military or something?

On top of that, he was letting Cable, Domino, Gambit and Wolverine script the training scenarios. Gambit might hate rising before noon, but didn't mind making everyone else suffer if he had to.

Warren had slumped down into his favorite chair, the one that let his wings hang over the back.

"I am never moving again," he declared.

"Well I'm not getting up," Bobby said.

"Someone needs to change the channel of the TV."

"But the remote is waaaay over there on the other side of the coffee table."

"Where are the telekinetics when we really need them?" Warren whined.

"It's an evil plan to make us listen to the news."

"How long have you been doing this?" Neal asked. He was sprawled on the carpet in front of the TV, staring up at the carved moldings edging the ceiling. "I end up feeling like a puddle of sore goo after every practice session."

"Since I was about fourteen," Bobby said moodily. "I still feel like sore goo every time."

"I was sixteen," Warren added. "It really was a school when we came here."

"Sort of. The Professor did make sure we studied and got diplomas and all that."

"Bobby's a certified public accountant, did you know that, Neal?" Warren asked.

"No."

"Ya'll are a big bunch of babies," Rogue said as she came in the room with a bottle of cola in one hand.

"Waaah," Bobby whimpered.

"Move over, Bobby, I want to sit down."

"I'm paralyzed."

"You're lazy, sugar, now move your big, stinky feet."

"Hey, leave my feet out of this."

"I'd like to leave your feet out of this house."

"My feet are not moving."

Rogue sat down on Bobby's feet.

"Hey!" he protested, pulling his feet from under her.

She gave him a triumphant look. "Baby."

He stuck his feet in her lap.

She ignored them.

"So what's on TV?" she asked.

"The news," Warren said mournfully, looking at the remote, which still sat tauntingly on the far side of the coffee table, an infinite distance beyond his reach.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, is that Magneto?"

They all perked up and listened.

"…there are no measures to protect the privacy of the mutants registered under the American CMRA. Mutants who are, I remind you, also citizens of their country, with the same civil rights as any other American. Is any other portion of the US population required to register themselves? Required. On the basis or political affiliation? No. Religious affiliation? Again no. Would Americans tolerate registration on the basis of ethnicity? Sex? There is no more control over birth with a x-gene than there is over being male, female, Black, Hispanic, Arab or Asian. Yet it would be unthinkable to force anyone to report to their government on those grounds — many Americans protest the inclusion of questions of just such identification when the Census is taken.

Even with the best intentions — intentions I cannot credit to President Creed — the scope for misuse and abuse of the personal information gathered as part of the CMRA is astounding. To what purpose is this information really being gathered we must ask.

It is an open invitation to target the most law abiding portion of the American mutant population and it is clearly intentional.

Do not let the blue colors and stars they wear fool you. The Friends of Humanity militias are no different than the brownshirts of Hitler's Germany. It is one of the greatest sorrows of this age to see the country that once stood for freedom in the hands of the hatemongers of the world."

"Wow," Neal commented afterward the segment.

"Does anyone besides me find it really, really weird that not only is Magneto, our like arch-nemesis, now running a country that used to be worst place in the world to be a mutant?" Bobby asked, "but he's also lecturing the UN on human rights violations in the US?"

"I think the word you're looking for is ironic, Bobby," Warren replied.

"No, no, it's weird, is what it is," Bobby declared. "It's like we slipped into some alternate dimension where Mags is a good guy and the US is bad."

"Hunh."

"Magnus has always been real good at making people think he's right," Rogue commented.

"Yeah, well, we never thought he was right," Bobby said. "Did we?"

"In response to the Americans' choice to victimize, dehumanize and even murder mutants there out of hate and fear, New Genosha condemns the Creed Administration. We renew our invitation to all mutants, everywhere, to come to New Genosha and find their place in a new homeland where they will not suffer under the yoke of human prejudice.

All mutants are citizens of New Genosha."

"I wonder sometimes," she said.

Neal looked thoughtful. "Shadowcat and Wisdom went there, didn't they?"

"Has anyone heard anything from them?" Warren asked.

Bobby shrugged. "I don't know, but don't mention Kitty around Storm. She's still really touchy about the whole 'defection' and 'betrayal' thing."

"You could ask Logan," Rogue said.

Bobby nodded.

"Yeah, you can bet if something happened to Kitty, Wolvie would be on his way to carve his initials in Magneto's guts."

Neal sat up with a small groan.

"It's just, you all talk about Magneto like he's insane, but that sounded pretty sane to me."

Rogue frowned prettily. "He hasn't been ranting and raving and trying to wipe out humanity since he took over Genosha. There's always been a side of him that is a good man, you know."

"That 'all mutants are citizens' thing sounded good."

"Yeah, it did," Bobby admitted. "And Rogue's right, Magneto isn't all bad. He wants to make the world safe for mutants."

"Of course, he's always figured getting rid of humanity would be the easiest way to do that," Warren commented ironically. "He's right too. Ask anyone who lives on land that used to belong to the Indians."

"Right," Bobby went along. "No one ever has any problems with the Neanderthals, either."

"You know, sugar, that probably isn't the best comparison you ever made."

"No, I think it was pretty apt, actually."

Bobby finally gave up and left the couch so he could retrieve the remote. He surfed past the news shows until he found the cartoon channel.

"Yes! Pinky and the Brain." He grinned manically at Warren. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

Warren held up his hand. "No, no, I really doubt I am."

Neal just looked thoughtful, while Rogue determinedly shoveled popcorn into her mouth. The subject of Magneto and New Genosha was abandoned.

But not forgotten.

"In other news, the White House announced today that the Office of Mutant Liaisons would be shut down following the official disbandment of X-Factor, the government sponsored mutant counter-terrorist force. This follows the administration's recent decision to reclassify all mutants as national security risks under the terms of the new Modified Patriot Act. Several class action lawsuits have been filed 'for cause' in response to the mass firings of registered mutants employed in federal and state agencies, but aren't expected to succeed. The ACLU has promised to pursue the cases to the highest courts in the land, but informed opinions are that the present Supreme Court's conservative make-up will not be well-disposed toward a 'pro-mutant' cause."

"How is he?" Scott asked. Bishop loomed just beyond his shoulder, just his presence intimidating.

Cecelia glared at them as she stepped out of the med lab and let the door slide shut behind her. She shivered and pulled her lab coat closer around her. Several stories below the public face of the Westchester mansion that housed Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning, all was indirect lighting and stainless steel. It was always just a little cold too, to keep the equipment running at optimum.

"Alive."

"When can we debrief him?" Bishop asked.

"Listen, you overgrown piece of meat, the man just lost his eye. He had two bullets in his leg and about bled out." Cecelia poked Bishop in the chest. Hard. "Forge's going to be out for a day at least and then he's going to need a lot of recovery time. Even with the Shi'ar tech we've got, which meant I could synthesize replacement blood that's an actual match, he's still in bad shape."

"We need to know exactly what happened at Fall's Edge," Bishop said stolidly.

"We know what happened!" she shrieked. "The government fired X-Factor and confiscated everything in Forge's labs. They tried to take him in and nearly killed him!"

"It's a good thing Forge insisted we have a back-up evacuation plan," Havok interrupted as he joined them. He had on civilian clothes and looked tired.

"Alex!" Scott exclaimed. He grabbed his brother and hugged him hard, surprising him.

Havok pulled back and looked at the three of them. "What happened?"

"Forge arrived here wounded. We were unable to contact any other member of X-Factor and discovered that the Fall's Edge HQ had been raided and shut down," Bishop stated.

Havok's eyes widened. "Shit." He nodded toward the med lab. "Is he all right?"

"He was shot. He lost an eye," Scott told him. No use sugarcoating it.

His brother's expression hardened. "Okay," he said flatly. "This is what I know. Val gave us a heads up Sikorsky was coming to shut us down. I talked to Forge and we decided since he's on a different contract with the Defense Department, he would stay while the rest of us got out. He had stuff in his labs that he didn't want to leave for just anyone to get their hands on."

He took a deep breath.

"We left everything except a few personal items we could carry and took the long way here. It took a couple of days because we didn't want to leave a trail for anyone to follow to Westchester. We were all on communication black-out."

Scott relaxed a little.

"That was good thinking. Is everyone with you?"

"Yeah, I left them upstairs."

"Okay, that's something."

"Not fucking much," Havok muttered.

"Well, five minutes ago, I was thinking you might be dead."

"You can't keep a Summers down."

"Look, I want to get everyone down to the War Room. You can tell us all what happened, then we figure out what the government may have got out of Forge's lab." He switched his attention back to Cecelia. "Just let us know if anything changes, okay?"

"Nothing's going to change, Summers."

"Bishop, get up to the security room and put everything on full alert."

Bishop strode away without another word.

Havok stared after him.

"Do you think someone surgically removed his sense of humor or was he just born without one?"

"He's not that — " Scott stopped and shook his head. "I think it might be another mutant power. Come on."

"… Responsibility for the violent attack on the Texas State House, which resulted in the deaths of twenty-seven people, has been claimed by the New Mutant Liberation Front. Fourteen more people remain hospitalized as a result of injuries received when the State House's dome collapsed after being hit by a energy discharge directed at it by one of the terrorists identified only as Shellshock. In a taped message, the NMLF claimed the attack was in response to the death while in custody of a mutant arrested for failure to register."

Mexico
Juarez

Scanner brushed the minds of the two people approaching them at the back table of the dim Juarez cantina, just to be sure there were who they were supposed to be.

They were.

The black girl in the tie-dye shirt and shorts sat down first, without greeting. The dead pale kid in cargo pants and a gray University of Colorado muscle shirt with her glared at Scanner and Milan first. Locus and Shellshock. A lock of blue-dyed hair had slipped out from under Shellshock's baseball cap.

"We're here," Locus said crisply.

"As are we," Milan acknowledged.

"What have you got for us?" Shellshock demanded.

Milan kicked the army surplus duffle bag at his feet into Shellshock's shins. "IDs and some toys that should let you fool the genescanners if you're careful." He looked at the terrorist scornfully. "If you can manage that."

"We can manage," Shellshock snapped. "We've done without Magneto's help before and we can again."

Milan folded his arms and met the younger man's gaze, unimpressed.

"Maybe we should be working with the X-Men, at least they managed to blow the Sentinel factory without getting their asses kicked," he said.

"The fucking X-Men wouldn't have even known about Bellingham if it weren't for us," Shellshock sneered.

Milan shrugged. Scanner caught his thought. The NMLF were kids without a real clue to what fighting was like. They were used to flattening flatscans with their powers and when they'd been faced with X-Factor, another superpowered group, they'd had to run. They were lucky it had been the X types they ran into first. They'd only got their licks in because X-Factor hadn't been fighting to kill. If they'd run into the Marauders or the Acolytes or the old Brotherhood, they would have been a few bloody smears in the dirt.

"What else have you got?" Locus asked.

The teleporter was a little more experienced. She was a veteran of the original Mutant Liberation Front, before Mirage infiltrated and betrayed it. Like a few of them, she'd managed to go underground.

"Money and intelligence," Scanner said. "Open your head."

"No hard copy?" Locus asked.

"Exactly."

"Feed me."

Locus dropped her psi-shields and Scanner downloaded the intelligence reports and background briefings Magneto had authorized them to turn over to the NMLF. She did it with brutal speed and thoroughness, writing the information into Locus' long term memory and bypassing her consciousness entirely. The last thing she transferred were a series of bank account numbers and the passwords to access the money in them.

Locus swayed in her chair. "Shit, what a headache."

"Have fun," Scanner said.

Milan threw down enough money to pay for the drinks they'd had while they waited and the two Acolytes slipped out of the cantina. At the backdoor, Scanner paused and wiped the memory of them from everyone in the cantina.

"In St. Louis, four people were killed at a Humans First rally after they were denounced as mutants. No word on their identities or if in fact these people were mutants …"

North America
Undisclosed location

Nathaniel Essex, known to the mutant underworld as Sinister, frowned at the results of his latest experiment. The subject had expired exactly forty-two minutes ahead of the predicted terminus. He disliked it when variables interfered with his predictions.

He would need to run the experiment again, to ascertain what had sped the reaction.

He checked his clone banks and hissed in frustration. That had been the last clone from Subject #6598 Hartwell, Marian. Another check revealed that Subject #6598's DNA sample had been among the thousands he lost when his wayward Marauder Gambit had blown up his St. Louis lab three years ago.

~Scalphunter. Bring the rest of the Marauders to me.~

Moments later, his handpicked team of mutant killers filed into the lab. Most of them were clones, of course. The originals had perished on various missions against a variety of his enemies, including the sanctimonious X-Men. Gambit, the man who had recruited them for him to begin with, had probably killed some of them more than once since breaking with Sinister.

The only ones he'd never had to replace were Sabretooth, who had a healing factor that made it close to impossible to kill him, and Gambit — who had stolen his own gene sample back before disappearing after the Mutant Massacre. If the thief's genetic potential weren't so amazing — on par with the Summers and Greys — Sinister might have had him killed for all the trouble he'd made.

But Remy LeBeau might still be swayed back to Sinister's side. He was still useful, even with half his powers suppressed and working for the X-Men. Besides, despite it all, Sinister retained a fondness for him.

"What do you got for us, boss?" Scalphunter asked.

Ranged behind him were Arclight, Blockbuster, Vertigo, Riptide, Prism, Scrambler and Harpoon. A good team now that Sinister had 'improved' them with faster reflexes, higher IQs, and telepathically downloaded skillsets that let them work in tandem better. The only missing ones were, of course, Gambit, Sabretooth, and Malice — who was dead. Sinister had never found a way to clone psionic entities.

Sinister typed in a command to his tracking system. Nearly every mutant he'd taken a sample from was tagged and traceable. Subject #6598 was among them. His system located her almost immediately, along with forty-two other mutants.

"There are forty-three mutants being held in Pelleau Military Reservation outside Martinsville, Ohio. I require DNA samples from all of them. In addition, you are to retrieve this woman — " A screen among the wall of monitors before him lit with an ID picture and stats on Marian Hartwell, " — and bring her back here."

He activated the protocols to begin preparing a suspension tube. He would keep Subject #6598 in hibernation rather than risk losing access to her. That would work for now, but he could see that the new anti-mutant legislation would soon interfere with his own plans. The flatscans could very well wipe out his experimental subjects. He couldn't keep all of his subjects in hibernation.

That couldn't be tolerated. Though he had no time for Magneto and his politics, this might be the juncture to explore an alliance. The Marauders wouldn't object to more action. They just got stale waiting around between his assignments for them.

"You got it, boss."

They turned and started to go.

"Riptide."

Riptide stopped and looked at Sinister cautiously.

"Have you been in contact with Gambit?"

"Not since he went back to the X-Men," the lavender-haired mutant said. "They've done a real number on him."

"Hmn."

Sinister considered.

"Resume contact."

The time would come.

"You going to bring him home?"

"Remy will return to us eventually," Sinister declared.

"According to sources within the administration, Peruvian poet and diplomat Joaquin Yamara's diplomatic credentials were denied by the US State Department due to his refusal to submit to a genescan to ascertain whether the world famous mutant rights activist is in fact a mutant himself.

"In a stunning development, as Yamara departed for Dulles Airport to leave the United States after being declared Persona Non Grata, the Peruvian embassy limousine was detained by two Prime Sentinels, which attempted to take Yamara into custody.

"The Sentinels were attacked and destroyed by a faction of the terrorist X-Men in a battle that resulted in millions of dollars worth of damage to parts of downtown Washington, DC.

"There were three casualties of the engagement between the X-Men and the Sentinels: two District of Columbia police officers and a Pentagon consultant. Their names have not been released."

United States
Westchester

Ice rimmed the edges of Spuyten Devil Cove, silver on sand, but the water farther out was black. Bare trees clawed the star pricked sky. A pale line marked the eastern horizon, a promise of dawn as cold as the snow on the ground.

There were lights around the mansion, part of the security system, but the boathouse remained dark. Gambit might not even be there. He'd showered, debriefed with the rest of them and taken off on his bike. Wolverine had followed. Frankly, he wasn't sure who was left at the mansion. They'd scattered as soon as they could, looking to each lick their own wounds in their own ways.

The cold insinuated itself under his coat, into his boots and all into the inside of his bones. He wasn't Bobby or Storm and immune to the falling temperatures. He felt it cut into his sinuses with every breath and watched the pale frost smoke of each exhalation as though it held the secrets of existence.

Maybe that was why Gambit and Wisdom and Wolverine liked to smoke. Sucking in slow poison like punishment, releasing all the pain and darkness and secrets inside with each breath.

Which was so stupid, because it all stayed inside.

He couldn't get rid of it no matter how hard he tried.

~Scott.~

~Get the fuck out of my head, Professor.~

~If you wish to talk, I will be in my office later.~

He refused to reply further. What the hell good would talking about it do? There were three people, three innocent people, dead because of the X-Men's actions. He'd been field leader. It was his responsibility. He would deal with it. He would live with it.

So would the others.

Some of them, he worried, wouldn't even have a problem. He was actually glad that Gambit had to go off and get laid, that Storm needed to hide in her attic greenhouse, that Wolverine was off looking for a good bar brawl; at least they felt something they had to run from. He worried more about Warren and Betsy and Bishop. They were the ones who had shrugged it off as bad luck, too bad, who accepted that there would be 'collateral damage.'

He felt along the psi-bond for Jean's mind, wanting the warmth of their connection, not wanting to wake her if she'd managed to rest. She was awake, sitting in a window seat, waiting for the sunrise.

He shivered.

It seemed such a long time until dawn.

"A grocery story in Dayton was burned to the ground today. The business had been the victim of harassment and repeatedly vandalized over the last weeks after it was discovered the manager employed two registered mutants. Obscene slogans were spray painted on the walls and glass windows were broken out repeatedly. The escalated destruction and arson followed a Humans First demonstration outside the store …"

Was everyone wearing blinders? If you put a fuse to a stick of dynamite and a match to the fuse … wouldn't you expect an explosion? Did you really need to know the people involved to see what the results of what President Creed and the government were doing would be?

Yield

Fri, 30 May 2008 00:12:16 GMT

11: Magneto Sphere

AD 2227, January 19
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

"Are we decided?" Magnus asked the room at large. He spread his hands flat along the polished surface of the conference table. They had been debating for hours, his patience with analyzing the same data over and over had worn thin. They were in the small conference room down the hall from the Alphanate's Assembly Chamber, the one with windows that looked out over the meditation gardens, and the shadows outside were growing long.

Gambit and Phoenix were seated on either side of him, but they'd been quiet through the meeting.

He glanced around the caucus of Primes gathered from the Alphanate and the Congress of Genosha. The eclectic group present were the basis of an informal foreign affairs group, most of them involved with civilian intelligence or security. If the talks between Genosha and the UN went on past the delegation's limited visit, then Genosha would need a more permanent diplomacy directorate — and that was the question posed. To continue the dialogue, to invite diplomatic contact from the member nations of the UN and rejoin the global community or not.

It was a moot point. They couldn't close their borders and pretend the outside world didn't exist any longer. Absently, he wondered how Northstar would like being compared to Pandora.

"You've already made the decision," Mystique stated. Her yellow eyes gleamed, filled with knowing amusement.

"Do you object, Raven?" Magnus asked curiously.

The blue skinned metamorph smiled coldly. "No, of course not," she said. "You know I've wanted to end the Interdict for decades."

Magnus considered her and wished he could persuade Jean to push past the woman's psi-shields and read what she really wanted. If Mystique wasn't part of the Dissenters, then she was certainly a sympathizer. Just how far her sympathies went though, that was the mystery.

~That's Mystique's thing,~ Remy murmured in his mind. ~She's always a mystery.~

He smiled in his mind but kept his expression business-like, switching his attention to the member of Congress sitting beside Mystique.

"Prime Compass?"

"I vote aye." The long, fleshy green spike-tentacles that covered Compass' head writhed and knotted. "Many of our people are curious about the Out There."

~They're going to be disappointed if they think it's better,~ Remy commented sardonically.

Jean's mental agreement held the same weary cynicism. Both of them retained politely neutral masks, but as the meeting wore on she and Remy had sniped and mocked telepathically. For a while they'd played a mental version of Hang Man which had given Magnus a headache. They were bored and well aware that all the talk meant very little unless they agreed with whatever the caucus decided. Mystique had been right about that.

Magnus moved his gaze to the woman next to Compass.

"Fugue?"

"Aye."

She didn't sound enthusiastic. But Fugue didn't show much excitement at the best of times. Her black metallic skin didn't flex or shift to show emotion. She had an excellent mind and a ruthless will that had seen her elected to the Congress as a Prime, despite a mutation that was only borderline beta. She also manifested a set of natural psi-shields that kept telepaths from reading her casually.

"Wanda?"

"You're asking me what I think?" the Scarlet Witch asked bitterly.

Beside him, Remy stirred, hiding a flinch. Remy could barely be in the same room with Wanda. Something about Wanda's thoughts sieved through Remy's shields, swamping him in her emotions. He suspected it was deliberate on Wanda's part. She'd never forgiven any of them for what had been done to her during the Gene Wars. She focused her venom on Remy, though she hated Magnus more.

Magnus didn't know which wounded him more: his daughter's hatred of him or her miserable unhappiness. Nothing helped her.

He didn't know what to do for her. Not since the night of her second suicide attempt, when she had kissed Remy on the cheek, then gone to her rooms and slit her wrists. Her frustrated screams when she healed almost instantly had echoed through the Citadel. Drugs couldn't help her. Three different telepaths had worked with her and failed. Remy could manipulate her emotions so that she felt good, but he refused. That just gave her another reason to hate him. Magnus could do nothing for her.

Even so, Remy (along with Logan — who had counseled letting her finish it) had objected to the telepaths implanting a command in her brain to keep her from hurting anyone, including herself, again.

Wanda had never forgiven that. She had won a position in Congress rather than taking her place in the Alphanate just to flaunt herself before the Triune and thwart them in any way she could.

"Wanda," Jean snapped. "Yea or nay?" She had no patience with Wanda at all.

"Nay, then," Wanda replied with a sick smile. Everyone knew her vote would contradict her father's.

He polled the rest of the company. Wolverine and Domino voted aye.

"It might shut the Dissenters up for a while," Domino commented. She drummed her fingers against the table. Her eyes rested on Mystique for a second. The metamorph smiled back enigmatically.

"They'll send in some spies, we'll send them some," Wolverine added. He slumped in his chair, a short, dark, hairy man with more experience than anyone in the room. Despite their original enmity, Magnus valued Wolverine's opinion on the matter higher than anyone else's. "It'll mean embassies and consulates, recruiting a whole bunch of people willing to deal with idiots and kiss ass."

"Leaves you out, mon ami," Remy said.

Wolverine chuckled. "You're right there." He stretched and settled back in his chair. "I'd rather be running down whichever Dissenter cell blew up the Number 5 Barrier Station."

"That's another matter for another meeting," Magnus said quickly. One without the presence of Mystique or his daughter.

Transit voted nay, surprising Magnus.

"You've had contact with the Ambassador and his people," Jean said. "Is there something that's influenced you?"

"No, they're all right. But they are diplomats and not the average person on street." Transit shrugged. "I tend to be somewhat skeptical that they're a true representative of stock humans Out There. It's wishful thinking to believe they've changed enough to accept us."

"Prime Scope?"

"I'm against it. It'll just stir up the nulls."

Magnus sighed. The nulls were harmless. In another hundred years there wouldn't be any nulls on Genosha. Even now the Havens catered to more mutants who had burnt out their powers than citizens born without the x-factor. It wasn't legal, but most parents who bore a stock child resorted to one of the mutating processes to ensure their child wouldn't go through life as a null.

"I abstain," Prime Sharps said. He shrugged when Magnus raised an eyebrow. "All the arguments have merit."

"Ice?"

Bobby ignored Magnus and stared at Remy.

"No way."

Remy met Bobby's gaze and erected an extra wall between his thoughts and the Triune. Bobby blinked first and looked away, but repeated mulishly, "No way."

"Sam?"

"Ah really don't think we're ready, sir," Cannonball said. "Ah've got to vote no."

"Psylocke? Oblique?" he asked the last two.

"I'd like to see England again," Psylocke said. She sounded almost wistful. "Without being in disguise."

The Securidat, under the command of Logan, along with Domino's military input and with Remy's okay, had been infiltrating spies outside the Interdict from the very beginning. Psylocke had been teleported outside Genosha numerous times. Other times it had been Shadowcat.

"That's right, you and the Securidat have been breaching the Interdict all along," Wanda sniped.

"That's what an intelligence service does," Psylocke replied evenly. ~Don't piss me off, Wanda. I might forget my 'ethics' and do a little more work on your pitiful excuse for a personality.~

~And don't even think about leaking anything to the stock humans,~ Jean added. She let Magnus and Remy 'hear' the telepathic exchange along with Psylocke and Wanda.

Oblique shifted in his seat, then nodded. "I vote aye too, sir."

"Good."

Even without a vote from himself, Remy or Jean, the vote fell to continued contact.

Magnus sat back, feeling pleased.

"Tomorrow we'll present it to the Assembly and the Congress."

"As the Triune wills," the younger members of the caucus recited, bowing their heads before leaving. Wanda left with them. The Constants were less respectful. Wolverine snorted out loud.

Remy stirred restlessly.

"Let's get a drink, get the taste of that out of our mouths," he said.

"I could do with something to eat," Wolverine said.

"One drink," Domino said. "We have to dress for the banquet for Aiken tonight."

"Don't remind me," Bobby groaned theatrically.

"I suffer, you suffer," Remy told him.

"Didn't you used to be the clothes horse, Gambit?" Logan gibed.

"Non, I just made everything look good."

Magnus sighed. He rather agreed with Ice. The robes they wore for formal occasions were a pain, no matter how impressive they looked.

"So, what're we waiting for?" Logan asked. "Let's get."

"I'll pass, thank you," Mystique said.

"You'll be at the reception?" Jean asked.

"Oh, I wouldn't miss it," Mystique purred. "I'm looking forward to meeting the Ambassador and all his people."

Yield

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:44:04 GMT

10: The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

AD 2005, May 23
United States
Manhattan

"The mercenary gig must pay pretty good," Remy commented after wandering around Domino's penthouse apartment. He'd spotted several original paintings he wouldn't have hesitated to steal if he'd been on a pinch. The view out the windows merited a moment's admiration as well.

The rooms were decorated in a fashion that reflected Domino: smooth, high-tech, stylish but comfortable.

Domino shrugged. "I've made some lucky investments."

A smile curled Remy's lips at that. He strolled over to the card table she'd set up, where the others were already sitting down to play. An eclectic group of X-types had shown up for the semi-regular game: Gambit and Wolverine had convinced Northstar and Storm to accompany them to the city, Pete and Kitty had shown up to a warm welcome from all but Storm, Psylocke had slipped out of the shadows, while Lila Cheney had ported Sam in then disappeared with a happy wave. The real surprise had been Emma Frost showing up.

"Nathan," Domino directed, "make sure Emma doesn't peek at anyone's cards. Emma, you make sure he doesn't. Betsy -"

Psylocke waved a hand. "I'll be on my good behavior."

Remy stared at the purple-haired woman. "You have good behavior, 'Lizabeth?" he asked incredulously.

She glared at him.

"Elizabeth would not abuse our privacy in such a manner, Remy," Storm reproved.

Remy rolled his eyes and Betsy smirked.

Cable grunted.

Emma genuinely smiled. "Have you got any white wine, Dom?"

"That bottle you brought a couple of weeks ago." She disappeared into the kitchen on a quest for the bottle.

Logan pulled out a cigar and his lighter with a flourish. Storm frowned and said, "If you light that in the house I will — "

"Do nothing," Domino cut in, returning. "This isn't the mansion, Storm. My place and my call."

Storm looked startled.

Domino waved a hand. "Smoke 'em if ya got 'em, boys," she directed. It looked like thwarting the weather goddess — and her sometime rival for Nathan's affections — had put her in a good mood.

Pete and Remy lit up with sighs of pleasure.

Storm's mouth opened, but she just managed to bite back a comment when Kitty stole a few puffs from Pete's cigarette.

"Good girl," Remy whispered in her ear. He took a seat at the table next to her. "Why you think we move the game here? It's this place or Wolverine's apartment — you remember, the sty?"

Storm's mouth quirked up involuntarily. The last time they'd played at Logan's place in New York, Remy had deliberately thrown a game to Sam. Then things got crazy again. But she remembered an overwhelming desire to invest in disinfectant just from walking through the neighborhood to get to Logan's apartment. Domino's penthouse definitely served as an improvement.

"So, what's the game?" Logan asked.

Domino sat down and picked up the deck of cards. She shuffled expertly and began to deal. "Five card stud, jokers wild, to begin with," she said.

" — So we're in Rhapastan on a job for Minister Fasaud -"

"That fils de putain, " Remy interjected.

" — I'm setting up a security system on the Finance Building and in waltzes this skinny brat — "

"Resent that, chere, just hadn't got all my growth yet."

" — and I hate like hell to admit it, but he walked through everything I had in place like there was nothing there," Domino continued.

Remy grinned, preened and shrugged. "What can I say? Impressive, moi."

Several people rolled their eyes.

"How about you're sorry for blowing that contract for me?" Domino asked sweetly.

Remy cocked his head. "Mais non, chere. My job was to steal the Ruby of Rhapastan. Your job was to stop moi."

"Smart ass," Logan grumbled.

"Okay, you've got a point," Domino admitted. She lit one of her dark cigarillos and blew smoke at Remy. "So who hired you to get the Ruby anyway?"

Remy's smile faded a little. "Candra."

"The External?" Storm asked.

Storm, Phoenix and Gambit had faced off against the former Benefactress of the Thieves and Assassins' Guilds in Cairo. From what had passed between Candra and Remy there and some things Rogue had let slip about the time she followed him down to New Orleans, it seemed Remy and Candra had a history.

"Ouai."

"That bloody twat," Pete muttered, garnering a swat from Kitty.

Domino considered Remy.

"How old were you then?"

He frowned then shrugged. "Seventeen or so? I'd just passed my Master's test, mon père sent me to the Benefactress as part of the year's tithe."

"Your father sent yer to that man-eater when yer were seventeen?" Pete exclaimed. "Bloody child endangerment that. No wonder Sinister got hold of yer later."

Kitty drummed her fingers on on the table. "You know, Pete, I'm getting a feeling you know this Candra person a little too well."

"What? I never — "

"Me thinks — "

"M'sieu Wisdom doth protest too much?" Remy finished, clearly eager to redirect the focus of the conversation.

"Look, it was when I was in Black Air," Pete protested. "Scicluna — "

Storm ignored the switch to teasing Wisdom. Her own experience with the Cairo Thieves' Guild and her old mentor Achmed gave her an advantage in interpreting what her friend had said. Remy's adopted father had sent him to Candra as part of the tithe — not to learn from her or work for her, though he must have. Small wonder he'd never spoken of that time.

She reached over and combed his errant hair away from his eyes with a gentle touch. His crimson gaze slid to her and for an instant she glimpsed still bleeding wounds in his soul. Then he caught her hand and pressed his lips to her fingers.

" — she weren't important enough to mention!" Wisdom swore.

Remy smiled, lopsided and amused. "She wouldn't like hearin' that, would she, padnat?"

"No, she wouldn't," Storm agreed warmly.

Cable narrowed his eyes and glared at three smug faces blurrily. He pointed an accusing finger at the threesome. "Whrn't 'ou druck-druke-drunk?"

Wolverine finished his latest beer and set the empty bottle with the little forest of them at his elbow. "Healing factor," he explained. "Cleans up the alcohol too fast to get more'n warmed up, unless I drink hundred-proof rocket juice."

The time-traveling mercenary took his time considering that. His thoughts were moving through warm mush after trying to match Wolverine and the others drink for drink. He'd always thought he had a hard head. It was embarrassing.

"Don't strain yourself, Nathan," Domino commented, half-amused and half-irritated since their psi-link made her privy to his disjointed thoughts. It was making her slightly queasy in fact.

She looked around the room. Nathan was about to do a facedown on the poker table, Kit and Pete had curled up together on her leather couch with the TV light flickering over their sleeping faces, Sam and Storm were making a valiant effort at cleaning up the kitchen and Emma had gone off to repair her make-up for the forty-fifth time. Thanks to Cable, her head was pounding like the drum section of a marching band.

Wolverine, Gambit and Northstar were still playing poker with everyone but Domino's money. She'd held her own, but it had taken every bit of skill she had and her mutant luck. Northstar had been a surprise, since he seemed too quick tempered and impulsive to be a good poker player. The mutant speedster could think fast too, though. He wasn't in Gambit and Wolverine's league, or even Domino's, but he had come out ahead so far.

Domino blinked and realized someone else was missing about the time Psylocke shadow-walked into the room with a bottle of aspirin in her hand. She handed it over with a sympathetic smile.

~Psi-links mean sharing your worse half's hangover,~ she pathed.

~Believe me, I'll make sure Nate pays for it,~ Domino answered.

"Well, what about them?" Cable demanded, nodding toward Gambit and Northstar. Gambit had a bottle of bourbon. Northstar had been experimenting with martinis the last two hours, drinking his failed efforts to create the perfect one. Cable's nod threatened to send him tumbling out of his chair.

Gambit snickered.

"Gumbo can drink all night," Wolverine said. "Nice trick."

"Real nice, homme, 'cept when the painkillers and anesthetic don't work on ya right neither," Remy commented casually. "Ya got a big mouth."

Wolverine just raised his eyebrows. He took more damage than any other X-Man because his healing factor and unbreakable adamantium bones meant he could, but he felt the pain just the same. Painkillers or any other sort of drug got dealt with by his body just as summarily as damage. He didn't think about it a lot, but he felt it loud and clear.

He didn't know that Remy picked it all up just as loud and clear. Wolverine shielded his mind and thoughts just the way Xavier and Jean had taught him. The shields just didn't mean jackshit to an empath picking up emotion and sensation.

Remy didn't bother explaining. He'd never bothered telling anyone why he drank alcohol that didn't get him drunk either: it dulled his psi-talents better than any sedative available. Strong emotions still poked through even so.

He spent a lot of time tightening his shields against picking up anything from Wolverine. Especially in battle when an empathic link could be a fatal distraction. He didn't heal as fast as Wolverine — no one did — and he hadn't even when his powers were spiking past alpha into the omega levels. Tonight he'd spent keeping the charm reined in, trying not to catch any of his companions' emotions as they played.

He realized he had a headache and decided to call it quits for the evening. He glanced at his watch. Morning, rather. He wondered if Domino would spring for feeding them all breakfast. The pizzas they'd ordered in earlier were long gone.

He set his cards down face down and stretched, rolling his shoulders, then letting his head fall back. Without lifting his head or looking he pushed the cards away.

"Fold."

"It's just you and me, froggy," Wolverine told Northstar.

Cable tried one last time. "Why'n't you drunk as me?" he demanded of the French Canadian mutant.

"Perhaps because I didn't drink as much as you?" Northstar asked sarcastically.

"Nope," Cable contradicted. "You dunk-drunk more."

"Jean-Paul gets drunk," Wolverine explained, earning a glare from the other Canadian.

"Rustre."

Remy chuckled at Northstar's muttered insult. Wolverine grinned toothily.

"He just gets drunk fast. Then he sobers up just as fast."

"Salaud."

Emma strolled back in and sat at her place.

Wolverine pushed a stack of chips forward. "Raise."

Northstar sneered. "Check." He pushed forward an equal stack.

Domino dealt the flop. Wolverine kept grinning. Northstar looked disgusted and tossed in his cards.

"Fils de putain."

"Ya got a potty mouth there, Beaubier," Wolverine remarked as he raked in his chips.

Cable laid his head on his arms and began snoring.

Emma smiled at Domino and anted up. "Deal."

A sharp exclamation from Storm sent Remy and Wolverine into the kitchen at top speed. A whoosh of air marked Northstar's passage as he beat them all. Domino followed with a frown she shared with Psylocke and Emma as she heard Sam — Sam of all people! — begin cursing steadily.

She reached the doorway and paused there. Sam and Storm had the little TV she kept for listening to the stock market reports over coffee in the mornings on. Wolverine was muttering, Northstar was rolling his eyes, and Gambit caught her eye and just shook his head.

"I don't believe it," Storm said.

"What?" Domino demanded suspiciously.

"Americans," Northstar exclaimed with a very Gallic shift of his shoulders.

"They went and flamin' did it," Wolverine snarled. He shouldered past Domino and the telepaths.

"It was on the TV just now, ma'am," Sam explained.

"What?" she repeated.

"Special announcement, chere," Gambit said. "Creed's Registration Bill been passed by the House." He mimed spitting. "You got any champagne?"

Domino raised an eyebrow. Her mind clicked to something Wolverine had said about the thief almost a year before: he got drunk on champagne and nothing else. The incongruous request didn't mean he wanted to celebrate.

"Sorry."

He shrugged.

"Is this true?" Psylocke asked Storm.

"Yes," Storm replied. Rain began spattering against the windows. The localized shower indicated how upset Storm was. The glass rattled as a blast of wind hit. A bigger weather disturbance was forming. New York was about to suffer a dark day.

"Don't these things usually take longer?" Psylocke was a Briton and despite residing for years at the X-mansion, didn't follow US politics beyond mutant issues.

" Ouai," Gambit said.

He'd given up on champagne and begun a pot of coffee. Domino kept major supplies of coffee on hand since Cable didn't approach bearable in the morning until he had at least two cups in him. He moved gracefully around the white tile and stainless steel room, finding the coffee maker and filters without difficulty.

Domino glanced at the TV screen but it had reverted to an infomercial for thigh toners. She decided to let Gambit calm himself his own way — the coffee would ease some of Nate's bad temper when he came around. It wouldn't be surprising if Gambit knew that; for all his wily ways, Domino had noted him playing peacemaker among his fellows more than once.

"Come on, Sam," she said.

Except Storm, the others followed her into the living room.

Cable was still snoring at the card table, but Wisdom and Pryde were blinking at the TV screen. Wolverine had appropriated the remote and switched on an all news channel.

Northstar was mixing martinis again. Domino scooped one up and tasted it. Too much vermouth. She drank it anyway.

"… This is Trish Tilby reporting from Washington, DC."

The camera man had her on the steps of the House, white marble glowing in the intense lights. A red ticker on the bottom of the screen displayed the voting record of the members. Trish looked solemn but excited. This was big news.

"In a stunning development, the House of Representatives in continuous session has passed President Creed's Bill to create a Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act. This bill was expected to provoke several partisan fights among various representatives and linger in the House possibly for weeks. Its unprecedentedly swift passage bodes for an equally quick ratification in the Senate."

"Bloody hell," Pete commented. Kitty curled closer to him and he wrapped an arm about her narrow shoulders. "We're heading back to the bleedin' UK on the next flight. You're getting a different passport too, first thing, Pryde."

"The CMRA, which mandates registration with the federal government by anyone with the x-factor present in their genome, with severe legal penalties to be levied on those who refuse, has been condemned by the ACLU and mutant rights activists, including Professor Charles Xavier. The CMRA also provides for comprehensive testing of children entering school, anyone applying for a social security number, employed in the federal or state government, in the military and those receiving medical aid at hospitals. It proposes a plan to co-opt the Census Bureau as Genetic Testers in order to eventually catalogue the mutant population of the entire United States."

Wolverine growled in disgust.

"It's going to pass, ain't it?" Sam said.

"It's just the beginning, bub, just the beginning."

Gambit and Storm came in carrying coffee.

"What's next, a damned tattoo on our faces like Bishop?" Kitty asked.

Storm tried to reassure her. "Kitten, it will never come to that. People will come to their senses before President Creed can sign this horrible bill into law."

"I suppose these are the same people that elected that cretin in the first place?" Emma remarked.

Gambit perched on the arm of the couch next to Wisdom and sipped his coffee, listening to Trish Tilby natter on about the CMRA and Creed's campaign promises.

Storm drew herself up and glared at Emma. "That is unproductive. We will just have to work harder to achieve the Professor's dream. Once people understand that mutants are not evil or somehow contagious they will accept us instead of fearing and hating us."

Gambit snorted.

"Remy — "

"Chere, you got no idea," he muttered.

Kitty was fingering her Star of David pendant. She looked at Storm.

"I don't believe it," she said quietly. "I don't believe the Professor's dream is ever going to work." Her expression was set.

Wolverine ran his hand through his hair.

"What else have we got to work for, punkin?"

She got up. "I'm not going back to London," she told Pete.

Pete's thin face blanched. "You ain't stayin' with these barmy gits, Pryde," he protested.

"No." She shook her head. "I'm going to Genosha."

"Genosha!" Storm exclaimed.

"Magneto needs people there," Kitty said seriously. "I'm going to join them."

"Kitten, you can't! You — "

Kitty ignored Storm and met Wolverine's eyes. "I know you hate him with good reason, Logan, but I think he's right. Normals will destroy us if they can. If we let them."

She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Pete — "

"Nothing to be sorry for, Pryde. You want to go to Genosha, we're going to Genosha. Never figured on workin' for the bloody buckethead, but he maybe has a point," Pete said quickly.

Kitty gave him a tight, small smile.

She looked around the others in the room. Domino followed her gaze, seeing what Kitty was seeing. Emma's expression gave nothing away, but Kitty's defection from Xavier probably touched the White Queen least; they weren't close. Storm looked horrified and unhappy with a shading of anger creeping into her eyes. Northstar obviously didn't care. Sam was just as obviously unhappy and biting his lip. Pete had already made his declaration. Gambit seemed distracted, but offered Kitty a slight smile and Wolverine just nodded, looking displeased but resigned.

"Kitty, Magneto's a terrorist," Storm declared, trying to dissuade Kitty one more time. "You can't join him. He's a — he's a madman."

"Dunno, chere," Gambit murmured. "Sometimes the buckethead makes sense."

"Remy, you're not helping, so shut up," Storm snapped.

Gambit sipped his coffee and winked at Kitty. She brought her hand up to hide her answering smile from Storm.

Pete glanced at his watch and said, "I need to make some calls."

Domino waved him toward her office. "Feel free."

"Thanks."

Kitty stopped beside Wolverine and kissed his bristly cheek. He responded with a careful hug. "Don't burn any bridges, punkin," he said. He let go and stepped back and Kitty followed Pete out of the room.

"You're just letting her go?" Storm demanded of Wolverine.

"She's an adult, 'Ro."

"It's all that ratty little man's fault," Storm complained. "Kitty never expressed any doubts before she took up with him."

"Before the petite grew up, ya mean?" Gambit murmured. He came to his feet in a lithe move and headed for Domino's office too.

Domino guessed the thief would be making arrangements for under the radar contact with Wisdom and Pryde even after they reached Genosha. With a shrug for Wolverine, leaving him to deal with the sulky Storm and Sam's visible worry, Domino decided she needed to do the same and followed Gambit.

Cable was still passed out among the abandoned cards and chips on the card table, snoring quietly. She patted his head as she walked by.

"We cannot give up on the Dream, Logan!" Storm exclaimed stridently.

"We can't live in a dream world any longer either, Ororo," Psylocke pointed out in her cool, aristocratic tones.

"Miss Storm, the Professor's Dream ain't the only one," Sam said.

"Sam, you've spent too much time with Nathan."

"Kitty wasn't attacking the Dream, Storm," said the British telepath. "But the Professor's way isn't everyone's."

"I'm very disappointed in you, Elizabeth; you and Sam and Logan and Remy. I expect this sort of pessimism from Cable or Wisdom, but not you. We have to hold onto our beliefs," Storm insisted.

"I ain't sure I wouldn't rather be lumped in with Wisdom and Summers," Wolverine replied. He pulled a cigar from his pocket, sliced the end off with one claw, and lit it. "They know the score. So does Gumbo."

"This isn't a game, Logan, that we're playing to keep score on."

"Nope, darlin', it ain't. "

Psylocke's was the last comment Domino heard.

"It's hard not to hate and fear them back, 'Ro. It's hard to believe anything we've done has made a difference."

Yield

Thu, 29 May 2008 22:41:39 GMT

9: Shiny, Happy People

AD 2227, January 8
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

Genosha. A Green and Pleasant Place. New Genosha didn't use that old slogan, but it appeared that way.

Hammer Bay from the air looked much like any other city. Except it didn't, though the differences were subtle. The actual bay gleamed a deep, clean blue-green and the city seemed almost manicured, everything gleaming fresh, new and eerily quiet. That surprised Alistair, though he should have realized it wouldn't be the bombed-out shell he'd found pictures of when he began his research.

He was looking forward to meeting — really meeting and talking to rather than being escorted from place to place by — his first real mutants.

He'd been surprised when one of the Ambassador's staff informed him the Genoshans had provided a hovermobile and driver strictly for him and pretty much set him loose on the city. He'd been expecting something much more controlled and formal. Even now he wondered how free he really was to explore.

Maybe they didn't care where he went because no one would talk to him.

The driver looked and sounded absolutely normal. Just a brown skinned man wearing a suit that wouldn't have drawn any attention on a London street. Alistair was disappointed.

"What's your name?" he asked. He'd chosen to take the front passenger seat rather than the more luxurious back area.

"Jimmy Adhu."

"Okay, Mr. Adhu — "

"Call me Jimmy."

"Thanks. Can you just drive us around and show me the city?"

"Sure. You want me to tell you about where we're going?"

"That'd be great."

Jimmy piloted them over Hammer Bay, starting at the docks, explaining that since the Interdict meant no outside trade, the docks were used mostly by fishing boats and pleasure craft, along with some military and coast guard boats.

Alistair peered out.

"It's a beautiful city," he commented. Parks and tree-lined streets interspersed the buildings, most of which showed a Mediterranean influence. Few were more than two or three stories high. The shining spire of the Citadel dominated the horizon, matched in height only by a needle straight dark monolith at the far end of the plaza at the center of the city.

"What is that?"

"Tower of the Dead," Adhu replied. He casually steered the hovermobile to let Alistair see it clearer. At the top a great flame wavered in the wind.

"It's what? A war memorial?"

"Aye."

Closer, Alistair could see the stairs that spiraled up the memorial's height. It looked like a long, long climb.

"Everybody in Genosha walks up it at least once. You ought to while you're here," Adhu said.

"I will," Alistair promised.

Adhu took them over a more high-tech portion of the city. A grouping of deep blue buildings caught Alistair's eye. They were unmarked and apparently solid, no visible windows or entrances.

"What's that?"

"Big Blue." Adhu shot him a look then laughed. "Right, how would you know? It's the McCoy BioMedical Research Facility. All the big brains work there." He pointed to another cluster of lighter blue buildings across the wide street. "And that's Muir, the Moira MacTaggert Memorial Hospital. Sometimes called Little Blue. They're associated."

They cruised through Hammer Bay, Adhu pointing out places of interest.

The Munroe Weather Control Offices, a pink pastel villa with extensive gardens around it. The Cable History Center which resembled a small college campus and boasted some brick buildings that did date back to Genosha before the Interdict. A statue of Scott Summers in the center of a plaza where the cobblestones were laid out in a black on red X. A fountain maze where the water walls of the labyrinth changed pattern every day with a flowered oasis at the center and an elegant restaurant Adhu promised him was the best in Hammer Bay.

The Securidat Headquarters, an ominous mirrored black cube with iridescent energy chasing over its face. Adhu gave a little shudder.

"No one wants to know exactly what goes on in there."

Adhu took the hovermobile over the residential parts of the city, comfortable looking neighborhoods that resembled the one the UN Compound had been built in. Again, Alistair noticed the Genoshan preference for buildings that hugged the ground. He asked about that.

"We tend to build underground," Adhu explained. He laughed. "Tall buildings went out of vogue back when alphas still challenged each other wherever they pleased. Too vulnerable. I guess the original city got leveled in the bad old days before the Interdict."

Alistair blinked. "Does that happen much?"

"What, challenges? No. That's what the Pit's for. Once in a while there's an accident, but really it's not a bad life if you keep your head down. They leave the betas and gammas alone anyway."

"Oh."

Alistair tried to fit what he was hearing and seeing into a coherent whole. He needed more information.

"Is it — I don't know the protocol of asking, but you are a mutant, right?"

Adhu laughed. "Sure. I could have introduced myself as Twist, but I thought you'd be more comfortable with my birth name."

"Twist? Uhm, what do you do?"

"Distortion. I can mess with just about anything that's solid. Inorganics only, thank the Bright Lady. I'm a beta, high end though. I spent some time in a sanctuary until I got it under control."

"Oh."

Adhu seemed so normal.

"It's not a particularly useful power, which is why I've got this driving gig," Adhu went on. "Well, maybe in battle. But I have to be in physical contact with whatever I'm twisting. I mean, there's not much point to melting a car into a pretzel. Not like the energy wielders. They usually spend at least a couple years in the sanctuaries getting a handle on their powers, then end up getting paid to feed the power grids or in the military maintaining the Barrier generators. The telepaths tend to go into the psych sciences or the law, except they all train in the Telepathic Corps. Even if they're gammas, they get trained."

"The Telepathic Corps? Is that military?"

"Yeah, but don't get your knickers in a twist." Adhu laughed again. "Everyone in Genosha does a stint when we come of age. We don't keep a big standing army or anything, but everyone gets some experience. Two years, then it's three months every three years, unless you're in the military or the police."

"Even people with families?"

"Hell yes. Thing is, we tend to have extended families, line marriages, there's always someone to look out for any kids. There are the Xavier Schools and crèches too. Kids don't get dumped here."

"What are the Xavier Schools?"

"You don't have them Out There?" Adhu paused. "Well, I guess you wouldn't. Most of us start coming into whatever we've got around puberty. The Xavier Schools are for learning to use your mutant power. They're named for some pre-Founding guy only the Twenty Constant actually remember."

He turned the hovermobile toward the outskirts of the city where what Alistair had taken to be estates of the very rich occupied the low hills. Most were walled and gated. Some had visible energy barriers around them as well.

"Those are the private sanctuaries. If a kid has a power that's kicking too high and no control yet, they move to one of the sanctuaries. That way if they get a spike, they can let rip in one of the buffered training areas instead of taking down part of the city. A lot of alphas spend a couple weeks a year in one, just cutting loose."

"Have you been there?"

Adhu nodded. "Yeah, even though I'm a beta, I could do some serious damage if I started distorting stuff right and left. It only took me a few months to get a handle on it, but you need to practice regularly to stay in control. You can't just dam up powers and not use them either. They bust loose and then you don't have a handle on them."

"Like going to the gym to stay in shape," Alistair offered.

"Pretty much. What else do you want to see?"

"How about some place we can get some lunch and talk to some people?"

"You got it, Mr. Kelly."

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:46:08 GMT

8: Carthago Delenda Est

AD 2005, January 8
United States
Washington, DC

Excerpt from the first Inaugural Address of President Graydon Creed, televised nationally. Transcript courtesy of the Telearchive of the North American Union.

1 January 2004.

"There is a covenant between the citizens of the United States and myself. I will hold myself to that covenant as President. I will do all that is within my power, the power of the office to which I have been elected by the people of this great nation, to protect those people. Our unwavering devotion to our country's greater good has brought us through extraordinary crises. It will again.

"We must hold firm to a hard course in order to emerge triumphant and safe from the threats that face us now. As our grandfathers and great grandfathers who served in World Wars I and II sacrificed, so will we — and we will triumph as did they!

"Those threats from outside our country have been met successfully during the Cold War and since.

"Today we are confronted with a new threat, a more insidious one than Communism or tin pot foreign dictators — because this threat challenges us from within.

"Mutants.

"We've all seen pictures of them. Creatures with scales, clawed and fanged, with the tongues of flies, the hooves of beasts, things out of our nightmares. Many of them are pathetic, ugly, mentally unbalanced and pitiful. But those are the obvious mutants.

"The real threat are the mutants passing among us: the man who lives down your street, the woman who works in the cubicle next to you, the boy your daughter wants to date. Because that man oozes acid from his finger tips, that woman can twist your mind and that boy may burn down his high school with a mere thought. These creatures are more dangerous than their monstrous kin. They want us to think they are like us, that they are human.

"They aren't.

"Can you fly or walk through walls? Can you kill with a thought or a touch? No one human can.

"They cannot be allowed to endanger our society by walking among us unchecked any longer. That is why I have drafted the Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act. My first act as President will be the introduction of the Bill to Congress.

"When mutants are registered we will have taken the first step in protecting ourselves and our country. When mutants are registered they will be answerable to the law and government, not hiding in the shadows or masquerading as normal people.

"It is my solemn vow that while I am in office, mutants will no longer threaten the citizens of this nation. Whatever measures are necessary, this growing threat will be neutralized. The Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act is the beginning of my plan to safeguard the United States. "

'In fact, the roots of the Gene Wars can be traced back to the Victorian Era and the first appearance of Charles Darwin's work. The idea of evolution and 'survival of the fittest' not only struck at the religious foundations of society, but served as the basis for species-based paranoia that raised its head a century later as mutants, always fractionally present within the human species, multiplied into numbers that were no longer invisible within the larger population. The presence of the so-called 'x-factor', a specific gene common to all superpowered mutants, resulted in the idea of mutants as a separate and united species rather than a subset of humanity. The unfortunate coining of the term Homo sapiens superior exacerbated the situation, not so much with the resentment of the characterization of mutants as superior, but by designating them once again as a separate species. This division resulted in the identification of mutants as The Other.'

The Other: A Psychological and Political History of the Creed Administration and the Comprehensive Mutant Registration Act. Ed. Annette Hoebling-Mannheim, Paul Galley, Simon de Milleare, Rene Corso and Leisel Wagner. (Small, Tan: Atlanta, GA 2065)

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:40:32 GMT

7: The Gods Themselves

AD 2227, January 5
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

The guards wore red uniforms and blank-faced masks, standing at the great double doors that opened into the receiving hall of the Citadel. The slim, black haired woman who had greeted the UN delegation at the airport stopped at the doors. She looked perfectly human, as had everyone the delegation had glimpsed since arriving on the Mutant nation island. Ambassador Aiken wondered if that hadn't been deliberate, and suspected it was. The Genoshans were making an effort not to disturb their visitors too soon.

"The Triune are within," the woman, who hadn't introduced herself said. She smiled slightly. "Just proceed inside."

"Thank you for your company," Aiken said politely.

She nodded. "It was nothing." Then her body seemed to dissolve into a cloud of smoke and she disappeared. Aiken took in a hard breath, but managed to hide his startlement. His assistants and the other UN representatives were chattering in low tones, shocked by the sudden display. It had been so long since humans had interacted with mutants, but they had all been briefed, all studied the histories of the Gene Wars; they shouldn't have been surprised. They were though, and Aiken was.

He gathered himself though and gestured the rest of his group to follow. "Come along, we don't want to keep the Premier waiting."

The hall was vast, the roof arching several stories above them, the polished black stone floor reflecting like a mirror. Massive columns reached toward the domed roof along each side. At the end of the hall, the floor fell away in steps that curved around to form an amphitheatre of benches that faced the raised dais at the apex of the hall. On the dais, three massive, equal thrones dominated.

Aiken stopped, staring up at the thrones and their occupants, for the first time grasping that phrase their guide had used.

The Triune.

Genosha was ruled by not one mutant, but by three.

The power seemed to pulse from the three figures looking down at the UN delegation. In the center, a regal white-haired man dressed in red and imperial purple robes watched them with cold blue eyes. This was the Premier, the man they had been briefed to expect, and Aiken had read history texts and psychological work-ups on him. None of them captured the sheer presence of the omega mutant known as Magneto. The white hair hinted at his age, but the imposing physique and features were those of a man in his prime. Only crows'-feet and a deep frown line between his white brows showed anything like age.

Aiken thought he might recognize the other two as well. His briefings hadn't addressed them in particular, but there had been some group photos and they, like Magneto, had not aged since the Gene Wars.

On Magneto's right, sat a woman crowned with a mane of flame-red hair that stirred with a seeming life of its own. Her eyes were electric green, no white, no pupil, and a molten glow shimmered around her green clad form. She was strikingly beautiful and the cold expression on her features frightened Aiken. This wasn't a person who wanted them here. That she had once been a member of a group that believed in co-existence between human and mutant was irrelevant. Phoenix no longer held such beliefs.

To the left of Magneto sat a lithe figure clad in black. His lean, chiseled features were as handsome as Phoenix' were beautiful. He slouched on his throne, head tipped slightly to the side as he watched the delegation's approach. A waist-length braid of russet hair hung over one shoulder, but didn't bind all his hair. Long bangs slipped free, brushing over his eyes, cheekbones, and jaw in copper-shot layers. His eyes were crimson on black, energy flaring from them and from the fingertips of his long hands.

The eyes were what identified him as a mutant recorded in the histories as Gambit. Little else was known about him, beyond that he had been a member of the terrorist group the X-Men before the Gene Wars, had led an even more ruthless group called the Marauders and had once been held in the former United States' most infamous Mutant Relocation Center — The Mojave — and escaped or been rescued.

That last made Aiken doubt the red-eyed mutant would be any friendlier than Magneto or Phoenix.

The three of them were still and silent and inhuman. They were survivors of a war that was long ago history to Benjamin Aiken and the rest of the world. They seethed with power; the air around them shivering like a heat mirage.

Magneto inclined his head and acknowledged them at last.

"Ambassador Aiken."

Aiken swallowed and addressed him. "Premier Magneto. I want to acknowledge how grateful the UN is that your government has afforded us this opportunity to visit your beautiful nation."

A sardonic chuckle came from the black-clad man.

Magneto lifted his hand and Gambit stilled, but the mocking look remained on his handsome face.

"We hope that the humans of the world have progressed enough that you may accept that opportunity," Magneto said in a deep, ringing voice. "There are those among us — " he nodded to the man and woman on each side of him, " — who once believed our two species could exist together peacefully."

"That is the hope we all share, Mr. Premier," Aiken said carefully.

"We were wrong then," Phoenix spoke up. She narrowed those empty green eyes. "Misguided."

"Surely, not wrong, but only . . . ahead of your time?" Aiken offered cautiously.

Gambit waved a long-fingered hand in dismissal. "Maybe things've changed, maybe not."

"We wish only to open a genuine dialogue between Genosha and the rest of the world," Aiken said.

"If you say so, mon ami." He gestured to the neat metal circlets adorning each member of the delegation's heads. "Interesting jewelry, non?"

Phoenix smiled.

"Psi-blockers. They buzz, you know?"

Aiken just hoped they worked. Phoenix, according to the briefings, had been an immensely powerful telepath.

Gambit looked past Magneto to her and smiled. "Irritating, isn't it?"

"Like a gnat."

"I'll make it go away, chere." Those crimson eyes rested on Aiken briefly and he heard a small, dry crack somewhere within the psi-block. Then Gambit's gaze shifted to each of the rest of the delegation. There was nothing else, no sense of an alien mind sifting into Aiken's, but he knew that the mutant had disabled the psi-blocks they wore.

"There."

Phoenix smiled. "Much better." She looked at Aiken. "You can replace them before meeting with us again, but do get them tuned next time." She waved at Gambit. "He has a much more delicate touch than I do. I'd just smash them . . . and your minds."

"Jean," Magneto said.

She patted his arm.

"They're so afraid one of us will mess with their minds. But those little toys could never protect them against a combat trained 'path." She sighed. "I won't bother them, of course. It would be so . . . rude."

"We will see," Magneto said.

Phoenix and Gambit dipped their heads, assenting without necessarily agreeing.

Aiken shivered. Reading about the bizarre abilities of the genetic off-shoots of humanity had been fascinating. That had been theory. He'd begun to think re-opening contact between Genosha and humanity might be a terrible mistake. The Triune were terrifying. They were frightening in their age and their casual, absolute power.

Magneto gestured and another person joined them, a slim young woman with brown eyes, brown hair in a neat ponytail. She looked about twenty and was dressed in blue-black leathers, an X patch on the shoulders of her jacket, and low-heeled boots. It looked like a casual uniform. She could have been a college girl from anywhere in the world.

Aiken was surprised to note a Star of David pendant around her neck. He had never contemplated whether mutants were religious. That was something the UN might utilize. Theology had been the basis of more internal conflict in countries than anything else but pure power. But then, underneath it all religious conflicts were all about power too, the power to control what people believed and therefore did.

"This is Shadowcat," Magneto introduced the young woman.

She smiled at Aiken in a friendly fashion.

"If you will accompany her, she will arrange you and your delegation's transfer to the UN compound."

"Ambassador?" she inquired in light, pleasant voice. Her accent seemed North American, subtly archaic.

Aiken had already noted that isolation had led to the Genoshans speaking a language that seemed based on twenty-first century English but liberally added to from numerous other languages. Not surprising in a country made up originally from refugees and émigrés from all over the planet. Time had done the rest.

"Yes, of course," Aiken agreed. He let the young lady lead him away from the Triune and down a marble-floored corridor.

"The compound was specifically built to house your delegation," Shadowcat told him as she guided Aiken out of the Citadel. His aides and other members of the delegation trailed behind them. "It's psi-shielded and located in one of the very best gamma neighborhoods. For your transportation needs, we've arranged a small fleet of hovermobiles very much like the ones you're used to. There are drivers available if want them, too."

Aiken looked at her. "I don't understand. Gamma neighborhoods?"

"Oh, gammas are mutants with non-active mutations. There are very strict laws about challenging gammas if you're higher ranked," Shadowcat explained.

A group of slate blue hovermobiles waited for them in an airborne stack over the Citadel's landing pad, each painted with a white, stylized version of the UN seal. The first one settled to the ground and the driver exited to open the passenger doors.

Aiken raised his eyebrows as he noticed the driver sported two curling horns in the thatch of black hair on his head and a sheen of scales along his cheekbones.

Shadowcat stepped into the hovermobile with a nod to the driver and settled herself. The driver gave her a very respectful nod then waited for Aiken before closing the door. Aiken settled himself in one of the very comfortable seats.

Shadowcat touched her finger to a holographic control panel. "Jing, take us to the UN compound and don't lose the other cars, please."

"Please explain about the … gammas?" Aiken asked her.

"A gamma mutant is quite helpless against an arena-trained alpha or even a clever beta. Of course, sometimes accidents happen, but that is what the 'paths and truth readers are for, as well as the crèches and training houses. All of our citizens learn an honor code when they are taught to use and control their powers. It's very effective. However, when it fails, there is the law itself. The penalties for breaking the law are quite … harsh."

Something in Shadowcat's brown eyes gave Aiken pause. He wondered what 'harsh' meant in this strange society of super-powered beings. She must have noticed as she reached over and patted his arm. "You have nothing to worry about. Diplomatic immunity means no one would dream of challenging any of your people. Besides, even in the other neighborhoods where alphas are more common, none of them would touch a null in any case. It just isn't done."

"Nulls?"

She smiled. "Our terminology for the unfortunate few still born without a mutation or who have suffered a devastating loss of their mutation."

Aiken considered that. Genosha had its ways of dealing with the non-powered and non-mutated. Interesting. No one had factored in the possibility of a non-mutant population within the borders of Genosha. Someone should have, of course, but they had been blinded by the image of the 'mutant nation'. There had been non-mutants who fled to Genosha during and at the end of the Gene Wars, though.

Families had accompanied the genetically different beings who left for a new homeland; parents, spouses, children, sometimes more extended groups and members of the notorious Mutant Underground who feared reprisals and criminal penalties for so-called terrorist activities before and during the war. Some people had been unwilling to accept the draconian laws passed to separate human and mutant, including embryonic testing and mandatory abortions, whether on religious or ethical grounds. Genosha had accepted more than mutants and mutates and aliens during the Exodus.

He wondered what life was like for them and their descendents.

The UN wanted a report of civil rights within Genosha. The status of normal humans, both legal and socially, would be a major interest when he reported.

Aiken leaned forward.

"Tell me all about it, Miss … Shadowcat?"

"Call me Kitty."

"Kitty. Please call me Benjamin. May I inquire as to your status beyond your charming company?"

She kept smiling and he acknowledged to himself that there was a very sharp intelligence behind her sweet looking face. It wouldn't do to underestimate this young woman. If she was young, he corrected himself. Mutants had demonstrated enhanced life spans before the Interdict. The Triune were proof some mutants were very long-lived.

"I'm with the DET. Directorate of Economy and Treasury," she explained.

Aiken was impressed. "What position do you hold?"

Kitty gave him a shark's grin.

"I'm the Minister."

Aiken sat back in his seat and blinked.

The grin got wider, but wasn't unkind.

"Check your history, Mr. Ambassador. Shadowcat may not have been as famous as Magneto, but I was there during the Gene Wars and before."

She tapped his arm with her forefinger, then it literally slid into Aiken's arm. He stared in horror. She withdrew her hand.

"Just thought you might like to know. The Triune aren't the only ones who were around for the Gene Wars. In fact, the government is littered with us. When you send your reports to the UN and whoever else you answer to, don't forget to mention this: Genosha has a very long memory. We take our Santayana seriously."

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:38:03 GMT

6: Amicus Hominis Sapientis

AD 2004, November 7
United States
Chicago

Chicago by night looked pretty outside the rain-streaked windows, all blurry and brilliant. Black and silver and sparkling colors. She stood by the window and looked out for a while, near enough to feel the cold that leached through the glass, but ignoring it.

She'd come to Chicago to finish a job she'd failed at before, but seen the futility of it quickly. Taking him out now wouldn't do any good. Edwin Delmyer would just take over and the outrage would be as bad as anything Creed could accomplish alive.

She'd walked out of the Convention Center, right past the security, without tripping an alarm. No one had a clue how close she'd been.

He certainly didn't.

She'd been so close … she'd smelt his aftershave. The disposable syringe full of biotoxin had been in her hand. One jab and it would have been over.

Only it wouldn't have been over. Graydon Creed would have been dead, but his poisoned legacy would have been inherited by all the more people if she'd made him a martyr.

She walked away from the window, picked up the TV remote from a glass coffee table and turned on the election coverage.

"The polls have closed in the Pacific Time Zone, Tom. By our latest calculations, Friends of Humanity candidate Graydon Creed and his running mate Edwin Delmyer have secured an overwhelming lead in thirty-seven states already …"

The picture showed the Daily Center Convention Hall, glutted with people and hate. All of them milling around like a stirred up ants' nest, waving their red-white-and-blue placards over their heads.

She looked at the bunting and clouds of confetti being shown and sneered. The speakers relayed a thin echo of the crowd's chanting.

"Humans First. Humans First. Humans First."

"We are humans, you cretins," she muttered at the television screen. Sound and fury, signifying … "And if we aren't, why should we give a damn about you pathetic losers?"

She surfed through the channels in a blur of images, but election coverage had superceded all normal programming. All the same, just different camera angles and talking heads.

She abandoned the remote on the white leather sofa and explored the rest of the apartment. There was a genuine Georgia O'Keeffe on the wall in the bedroom, everything decorated in colors to match, very minimalist. Not quite her style, but not bad. She certainly wouldn't suffer spending the night.

She found a bottle of vodka in the freezer of the apartment and a water glass in one of the cabinets. Both came with her as she wended her way back into the perfectly decorated living room.

Another snappy campaign slogan caught her attention.

"Safe in Our Homes, Safe on the Street."

She glanced into the bathroom where she'd stashed the apartment's real owner after morphing into the woman's duplicate.

"Ooops."

Anyway, the woman could have tripped on a curb and fallen in front of a bus or slipped in her roman bathtub and drowned. Didn't they know more fatal accidents happened at home in the bathroom than anywhere else? Running into a shapeshifter that needed a new face and identity for a few days had just been bad luck. These things happened.

She poured herself a generous portion of vodka and saluted the television before swallowing an icy-searing mouthful

"Well, it's not official yet, Tom, but clearly Graydon Creed has won this election and will be our next President. What this means for the mutant …"

She laughed in the silence of the appropriated apartment, letting her latest form morph back into her default form: sleek, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed, blood-red hair.

"Oh, you stupid bastards, you should have let me kill him when I meant to," Mystique breathed. "I swear to God he's worse than his father. He knows it's us or them."

What insanity had led her to sleep with Victor Creed? The same insanity that made her carry the murderous bastard's child to term? Then to find out that despite his parents, the baby had no trace of the x-factor. The only thing he'd inherited from them was Sabretooth's vicious nature.

The Gods were evil ironists. Or sadists.

She swallowed another mouthful of vodka.

Graydon really was just like his father. Giving him up for adoption to a normal couple had seemed like the kindest choice. How could she have predicted he'd turn out the way he did?

Oh, wait, with Victor Creed as his father, even if they never had met?

She should have guessed.

She should have strangled him with the umbilical cord.

Mystique finished her vodka and poured another. The more she thought about it, the more getting drunk seemed like the best response to this development.

Her son was about to become President of the United States. Four years ago, she'd stopped him when she shot him, but the X-Men had interfered and her shot hadn't killed him.

On the television screen, he strode up to the podium. He didn't look like her. She could look exactly like him if she wanted, but that meant nothing. Kurt looked like the real her — blue. Yellow eyes. Graydon was tall, broad shouldered, with short cut blond hair, a sharp planed face and eyes colder than the moon.

"Our next President!"

He took the microphone off the podium and strode to the front of the stage. The mob of FOH supporters roared.

He smiled.

Watching, Mystique flinched.

"Graydon Creed!"

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:32:19 GMT

5: Big Time

AD 2227, December 14
European Union
London

"It's the chance of a lifetime."

The Genoshans had offered talks. Limited contact if the UN and the Genoshan government could come to a mutual agreement. A delegation would be allowed past the Great Barrier. The delegation to include representatives of the world's news media.

The chance of a lifetime.

That's what Alistair's editor Nigel said. He had to admit, it sounded like it. The first people to cross Genosha's borders in — count them — two hundred nine years. The first to ever chronicle the reality of a mutant nation behind the Great Barrier. Columbus, Louis and Clark, Marco Polo, Admiral Perry, how many men have an opportunity of that caliber?

"Why me?" Alistair asked.

"Twenty possible names were nominated to the UN by a coalition of world news organizations. Whoever goes will be representing everyone." Jeremiah Jameson's dark eyes narrowed. They were in the publisher's corner offices. Banks of windows on both walls displayed the panorama of London. The International Bugle offices occupied the top floors of one of the highest buildings in modern London. "The UN tossed three of the biggest names — Parker, Russell, and Noriko. They submitted the list to the Genoshans as a courtesy. The Genoshans sent back the list pared down to five acceptable names, with yours on it."

"Oath."

Alistair's fingers itched to pull out his stick case, get out a tran, snap it and suck down the soporific vapors. Jameson didn't approve of reporters using stims or trans on the job, so he didn't.

The Ares Explorer crew had been debriefed extensively, while teams of scientists and engineers examined and tried to reverse engineer the methods and technology used to repair the ship.

Interviews with the crew by news organizations had revealed that the Genoshans had been uncommunicative but polite. Rumors that they were monstrous looking aliens were dismissed. The Genoshans the crew meet were human looking.

Only one name had been revealed: Rickman Davies, the captain of the Ares Explorer, had been delivered to the Station commander's compartments to receive the Genoshans' offer to open a diplomatic dialogue with the UN. The offer had been tendered by Prime Northstar and a deputy introduced as Councilor Milan.

Four months of debate in the UN Security Council had been the result. The decision to send a delegation with an official ambassador of the UN had passed by only three votes. The North American Union had been set against it. Threats of withdrawal from the UN were ignored. North America had never recovered its superpower status after the Scourge.

"There's places for three reporters, Kelly," Jameson told him. "Two places go to a holo-man and his videorama operator. The third space is for a text man."

The news that the crippled return-bound from Mars ship Ares Explorer had been rescued by crew from Avalon Station - mutants — had echoed around the world. The textfeeds and holo-newsvids had been non-stop with the story. People were scared. People were excited. People were fascinated, hanging on every pundit's words, baying for more. This was better than the Mars Colony. This was the mystery in their backyard.

"The UN settled on Dezane and his vidder Valeriev and wanted Mitch Almondalar as the text reporter — "

"So, again, why me?"

"He's getting married this month and doesn't want reschedule his honeymoon," Nigel said with a quirk to his mouth. Alistair could see his newshound editor didn't understand that. Blowing off the story of the decade — hell, maybe the century — to go on a honeymoon? What kind of reporter did that?

"Three others though."

Jameson nodded.

"One of them will go if you refuse."

Alistair leaned back in his chair.

"Who are they?"

"Obume, Rodriguez, or Skiller."

"Skiller!?"

Nigel grinned.

"I thought that would piss you off."

"That soddin' git," Alistair said through gritted teeth.

"Whoever goes will get a Pulitzer," Nigel taunted. "You want Skiller taking it … again?"

"Shock no."

"I want this for the Bugle, Kelly," Jameson stated. "My family has been publishing this paper since it was the Daily Bugle and based in New York."

"I — All right," Alistair said.

"Good man."

"I guess I better go do some homework on mutant history and the Gene Wars," he said. He got to his feet.

Jameson shook his hand and Nigel clapped him on the back.

"Unh, how long will I be gone?"

"Six weeks."

He'd need to clean out his apartment a little, pay his urgent bills, and let Gale know he'd be out of town and couldn't attend her parents' anniversary in Ludwell with her next month. There was a bloody relief. Plus getting one over on that worthless arsebite Skiller made it all sweeter too.

Alistair's footsteps picked up as he headed for his cube.

He began to whistle.

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:28:42 GMT

4: Spikes and Flatscans

AD 2004, September 12
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

Bored. Bored. Bored.

Their thoughts tap-tap-tapped at Scanner's brain like the irritating drumming of Carmella's fingers on the table. Who knew being one of Lord Magneto's Acolytes would involve so much empty downtime?

Wouldn't want to forget the scintillating company, either, would you?

The only one not sitting around the rec room vegging out was Milan, who had plugged himself into the Net, consciousness surfing the electronic information pathways. His mind felt/sounded like binary code heard through a telephone speaker, a white rush randomly spiked with high frequency squeals. His face had gone blank and slack, eyes flickering behind closed lids. Frankly, it looked creepy.

Carmella was warming up to another bad-tempered fit. The foot-tapping and drumming fingers were a dead giveaway. She was going to start bitching about something in a minute and expect everyone to listen to her because she was Unuscione, Unus the Untouchable's daughter.

Big whoop as that little Asian X-girl would have put it.

Sven and Harlan were glued to the bigscreen TV, watching the bouncing boobs on a high-def rerun of Baywatch. Despising flatscans didn't keep them from drooling over Pamela Anderson's silicone enhancements.

Little Klaus was watching Unuscione out of the corner of his eye, about ready to phase out. Neophyte was one of the smarter ones, but he was too soft. He'd turned on them once.

Scanner didn't trust him. Though she'd learned herself how easy it was to fall for the X-ers oh-so-reasoned arguments. She'd found her ass turned over to the government for trusting Scott Summers and the rest of the do-gooder Uncle Toms, though; she wouldn't make that mistake again. None of them would.

Neophyte was a kid. Then. He still looked like it now. He was better company than the rest of them, though, if you got past the shyness. Scanner supposed you didn't have to trust someone to like their company. He was a hell of a lot better than Katu and Javitz and the rest of the testosterone brigade.

Milan wasn't bad, either, when he wasn't jacked-in.

Bored.

Well, she was too. They hadn't had a real challenge since they threw down with the X-Men in the Arctic, just before Magneto and his clone just about shredded the magnetosphere. Then the UN turned over Genosha to Lord Magneto and the X-Men just stepped back.

Scanner flipped her blond hair over her shoulders and got up. If she wanted something to eat, she needed to fix something. Nobody else would bother making lunch. Or dinner or any other meal, she reflected. Besides, the kitchen would be empty and peaceful. Did other telepaths end up playing den mother to their teams?

There was Grey. The original X-woman probably did a lot of psychic care taking with that lot. Xavier had them all so twisted up, terrified of hurting any flatscans, guilty just for having their powers, never mind using them, all the X-teams had to be head cases.

Lord Magneto didn't go into anyone's head at least. He really didn't care what the Acolytes did to entertain themselves so long as they were on hand to slap the flatscans down or go toe-to-toe with Xavier's lot.

So, she thought as she mooched around the kitchen fixing a plate of sandwiches for herself, what other telepaths did she know about?

There was Xavier, mutant Daddy Warbucks and all around father figure. From the briefings Magneto had given them, the Professor was one of the most powerful telepaths in the world. He spouted off his peace and harmony between human and mutants baloney and talked about his students as his children. As a father figure, though, she had to figure he sucked: he'd taken in a bunch of messed up kids and trained them into shock troops to pursue his own personal crusade. She didn't fool herself that Lord Magneto was much better, but at least the Acolytes had chosen to follow Magneto and they were fighting for themselves and their people not an abstract concept.

No, she wouldn't accept Xavier as any kind of nurturer.

Psylocke, the other telepath on the X-teams? Psylocke didn't have the sheer power of a Jean Grey or Xavier, but she used all her discipline and skill to make up for it and Scanner — as another telepath who used creativity rather than strength — did not want to meet up with the X-woman's psychic knife. No. The re-embodied telepathic shadow-walking ninja assassin just didn't do maternal.

She found some barbecue potato chips and added them to her lunch tray.

There was really only one thing she envied the X-teams. They might be misguided idiots, but they stuck with each other. You never faced off against one of them alone. Mess with one, mess with them all. Once in, never out. The Acolytes weren't like that. They were loyal to Lord Magneto and they'd gone along with Cortez and Exodus before Magneto returned to them, but they weren't close to each other.

She took her food back into the rec room considering that last thought.

The Acolytes were ruthless fighters, but the X-teams had defeated them on numerous occasions. Lord Magneto himself had more raw power than any single mutant, but they'd thwarted him more than once.

The X-Men fought as a team, supporting and backing each other up. The Acolytes fought each on their own. If they could work together the way the X-Men did, no one would have a chance against them.

She sat with a sandwich forgotten in her hand and blinked.

It was that simple.

Her thoughts snapped back to her surroundings as Carmella began shrieking at Sven. Harlan took a swipe at her for attacking his twin. Carmella snapped her psionic exoskeleton into being. Harlan bounced off the flaring green energy. He stumbled back and hit the TV, nearly rocking it off the stand.

"Stop!" Scanner shouted.

What had she been thinking? These jerks couldn't watch TV without fighting each other. The only ones they listened to were Lord Magneto or Exodus. They weren't a team, they were a gang.

The three of them turned and stared at her.

"Stay out of it, Scanner!" Carmella snarled.

She waved her hand. "Just take it outside."

"Yeah, we can take bets on the fight," Frenzy said from the doorway, "and on how soon Lord Magneto gets ticked off by your fighting and gets rid of you."

She looked pissed off and gray with exhaustion under her dark skin. Even stranger, she had on a business suit and not fighting armor.

"Back from the UN?" Scanner guessed.

Frenzy nodded and walked into the rec room. Carmella and the two Kleinstocks slunk out behind her.

"Ambassador," Frenzy snorted. She hovered her hand over Scanner's plate of sandwiches and raised an eyebrow.

"Go ahead."

"It's such a joke. Lord Magneto has me talking to those stupid flatscans, when we should just flatten them," Frenzy went on. She bit into a sandwich, closed her eyes in apparent ecstasy and chewed.

Scanner frowned. "Maybe," she said.

Frenzy swallowed before speaking. "All the damned negotiating gives me a headache. Lord Magneto wants aid packages, workers to rebuild everything that's been smashed in the civil war."

Hateful to admit needing help from non-mutants, but the Acolytes were fighters. None of them had any idea how to fix a country that had been flattened by a decade of war between humans and their rebelling mutate slaves. There was still guerrilla fighting between groups of renegade Magistrates and radical mutate groups despite Magneto's takeover.

Hammer Bay was a shattered shell of a city, though the Citadel where they were ensconced remained in good shape.

Trade embargoes had been strengthened when Lord Magneto assumed control of the country. Most countries were refusing to recognize his government. There were no more camps full of mutates dying of Legacy thanks to Henry McCoy's work and the sacrifice of the former X-Man and Acolyte Colossus, but the survivors had no homes or jobs to return to. The entire country remained under martial law.

Milan's voice startled them both.

"Turn on the TV."

Scanner had no idea where the remote was. She went to television and turned it on. "What is it?" she asked.

Milan looked like he'd bit into an unripe grapefruit.

"Any of the US networks, Scanner," he said.

"Republican Governor Edwin Delmyer has resigned from his party to accept a place on the ticket as Friends of Humanity candidate Graydon Creed's running mate. With the primaries and the Republican National Congress already over, this defection leaves the Republican Party in a quandary. Field another presidential candidate in Delmyer's place or throw their support to the Creed campaign …"

Frenzy set the remaining piece of her sandwich down.

"We can forget any aid from the UN," she said.

Scanner nodded along with Milan.

"Lord Magneto will not be pleased."

Scanner rolled her eyes at Milan.

"Does it really matter to us here?" Klaus asked softly.

It would matter to the mutants in the United States.

"Lord Magneto believes in protecting all mutants," Milan explained.

"Do you think he'll send the Acolytes to do something about it?" Scanner asked Frenzy curiously. Frenzy had been spending more time in Magneto's counsels due to her post as new Genoshan Ambassador to the UN.

"No. Our faces and powers are too well known the world over. Anything the Acolytes do outside of Genosha now becomes state sponsored terrorism and Genosha becomes an outlaw nation."

"Maybe it will blow over and the FOH will lose the election," Scanner said. She doubted it, though.

Frenzy snorted. "Maybe Javitz will start wearing frilly pink mini-skirts, but I'm not taking any bets."

"Ugh, thanks for an image I didn't need," Milan groaned.

Scanner said, "I've been thinking about when we fought the X-Men. I had this idea …"

The TV in the corner droned on.

"In New Genosha, the estimated death toll from the fighting between humans and mutates that has continued under the rule of Erik Magnus Lehnsherr has been estimated at over fourteen thousand. Deaths since the beginning of the human/mutate civil war over a decade ago have been calculated to lie within two point five and three million total. Joanna Cargill, Ambassador to the United Nations from New Genosha, told the Security Council that widespread famine and lack of adequate health care were responsible for a majority of the deaths since …"

Yield

Wed, 28 May 2008 20:25:51 GMT

3: Pacing The Cage

AD 2227, October 18
New Genosha
Hammer Bay

He stood in the doorway to a carved stone balcony, high above the glitter of the capitol and stared out into the night. The vast, dark room behind him echoed with emptiness. Heavy, ornate crimson robes of office still hung from his broad shoulders, but he had left his helm behind in one of the three seats that dominated the room.

The wind from the water brought the scent of salt and marine life with it. It teased at short hair that glinted silver by starlight. It whispered with the hum of the city and the crash of waves.

Beyond the city, beyond the land, far on the horizon where the waters were dark as the night sky, sheets of almost intangible energy towered upward.

Veils of color fell across it, chased side to side in oily, iridescent flares of light. By night, the entire expanse was shot with veins of green lightning, flame gold and rose red. It rose from the ocean floor beyond the edge of the horizon to the limits of the atmosphere.

The Great Barrier.

Seen by a human eye, it was beautiful. Beheld through his mutant senses it was more so.

By day it was an added sparkle against the blue of the sky, a hazy, wavering glow far out on the water. By night, against the velvet darkness, it could be spectacular, an eerie extension of the Triune's will. Electromagnetic, quantum kinetic and psionic forces were merged into each other to form and create the Barrier.

Anything sentient, anything mechanical or technological passing through it was destroyed. A psionic warning spared cetaceans from crossing it. The Great Barrier sustained itself with minimal maintenance, but remained inextricably linked to their psyches, responding to the Triune's moods. Tonight color exploded across it.

It pulsed. It sang to the man on the balcony. It was part of him, part of them, of three minds synched into one force, one intent.

It symbolized the Interdict that kept all humans and their works out of Genosha. It kept his people safe. He was afraid, though, that in time it would only keep them in. He would not let Genosha become a mutant cage.

It wasn't time yet to bring the Barrier down. In time, though, in time … Genosha would not be enough.

He was not the absolute ruler of Genosha. He was one of three and his companions tempered his beliefs with their own. He had intended to slowly sway them to his own vision. They were unaging and undying, he had time to convince them.

Until the Ares Explorer IV breached Avalon Station's defensive perimeter.

He was quite tempted to rage at Northstar. It would have been satisfying.

Also pointless.

With his consorts' agreement, he had authorized the Avalon Prime to spare the crippled spaceship. One telepathic scan had revealed its crew were unconscious and in several cases wounded. Another swept unnoticed through the minds of the mission control at the top of the humans' orbital elevator. The incident wasn't a trick or the prelude to an attack.

Northstar wanted to do more than ignore the ship. He wanted to rescue it. He considered the people on it to be innocents.

So did the Triune. They acceded while urging caution.

Northstar had authorized retrieval and rescue, bringing the ship into Avalon. Crews of repair people swarmed over it, thrilled and fascinated to deal with the very different and in many ways backward technology of the human world outside Genosha. A medical team had boarded the ship to deal with the traumatized crew. A surveillance satellite's feed had been overridden to send a message to mission control aboard the orbital elevator.

Human and mutant had officially met again.

The Interdict had been breached.

Perhaps it was time to resume diplomatic contact with the outside world. The Gene Wars and the time before were only history to mutant and human alike. Only the Twenty Constants remained and remembered. Of course, the Triune were among the Constant and the body of the Triune were not best pleased. They remembered and their memories were not pleasant. He anticipated bitter opposition to any suggestion of contact.

"A small delegation," he argued. "In exchange for a seat on the UN Security council. A chance for our people to travel outside Genosha."

"They'll send nothing but spies and fools," the third member of the Triune replied. "They'll never give us a seat on the Security Council."

"Is traveling outside worth the risk?" their second asked. "Should we allow any of them within our borders? How could we protect our own people if they left here?"

His old friend had dreamed of a world where mutant and human lived in peace side by side. He had dreamed of creating a sanctuary where mutants could live in safety from hatred and fear.

The Triune had made Genosha into that haven and erected the Great Barrier to protect it.

Was it time to try to make that other dream real?

"I would hope we wouldn't need to protect them."

"Now you're living in a dream world, mon ami." Words accompanied with a snort of derision.

"You are the ones who used to believe -"

Their second narrowed her green eyes. "Once."

The irony didn't escape him. He, of all men, urging them forward to meet the humans, to perhaps even allow some within Genosha's borders, while the gentler, kinder members of the Triune counseled suspicion and paranoia.

"Why're you asking this of us?" their third asked.

"How long before our haven becomes a stagnant ghetto? How long before the Dissenters become more than an annoyance? How long must we go on as gods?"

That had startled them both.

"What if we could give up the Interdict, dismantle the Barrier?" he asked. "We could be free."

They looked at him and something stirred through the psi-bond.

Maybe it was time. He'd felt their interest and reluctant hope kindle. Despite their doubts, they would agree.

Restless, he reached through the psi-link and touched them. One was alone in her quarters at the Residence. Her husband, one of the architects of their nation and a hero of the Gene Wars, had died in his sleep more than a century past. Her loneliness fed through the link, mitigated only by their third's empathic warmth. The other lay in his lover's arms, drowsy and content in the afterglow. His pleasure and affection weaved through the Triune, soothing them even as he dropped toward sleep.

Wordless, their third communicated:

~notalone/sleep/affection/exasperation/joy/softness/question/love/notalone.~

The link carried their second's agreement and quiet, ~Go to sleep,~ back between the three of them.

With a sigh, he decided to return to his own quarters.

Her mental voice whispered an invitation.

~Come here. Keep me company. I'm just reading a book. Thinking about them disturbs me.~

~Very well, my dear.~

Tomorrow would be soon enough to decide the great issues.

Yield

Tue, 27 May 2008 04:41:54 GMT

2: X
continued from last post

Warren lifted his eyebrows as Rogue took to the air. He turned back to his conversation with Brian, Emma, and Storm. He addressed Storm.

"Tell me they're not starting up again."

"Rogue appeared unhappy," Storm remarked.

"And Gambit is all over Wisdom," Emma added.

"My brother is not — "

"Oh, what would it matter, Storm?" Betsy said, strolling over and interrupting them. "Wouldn't you be happy as long as he was?" She arched one delicate purple brow, making the scarlet lightning strike tattoo over her eye shift.

A clap of distant thunder indicated Storm's displeasure. She straightened up and glared at Betsy. "Of course, I want Remy happy. Nor would I care if he found happiness with another man, I merely dislike this constant gossip about his relationships."

Warren began laughing. It felt good. Coming to terms with what Gambit had done in the past and what it had cost Warren had made him a happier man. Gambit had made a terrible mistake, but not out of malice and no worse than Warren's choice to serve Apocalypse. They had both been desperate men. It was in the past. While they would never be best buds, he had let go of his anger and genuinely wished the other X-Man well. Besides, better to have the slick bastard beside you in a fight than against you. He made a bad enemy.

"Storm, it's part and parcel of being with the X-Men. It must be in the by-laws. We have to wear bad spandex and angst at least three hours every day."

"Not to mention watch our various exes hook up with our other friends and keep up a good face," Betsy said with an arch glance at Warren.

"It can resemble a rather incestuous soap opera," Emma agreed.

~You would know,~ Betsy sent.

~You didn't have any better luck seducing Scott than I did.~

~But now I've got Neal. Who have you got?~

~Maybe I'll make a play for Warren. Since, as you say, you have Neal now. We'd look good together, don't you think?~

Betsy's response was a mental shrug of indifference.

"Better not let Northstar and Aurora hear you say that," Warren said.

Betsy smiled wickedly. "I propose we replace the X with a triangle. After all, Scott and Jean are about the only couple around here that has stayed a couple."

Emma's lips curved into a catty smile. "If you forget about Madelyne Pryor."

"We all tend to forget Maddy," Warren said. He nodded toward Cable. "Except Nate and I bet he doesn't think too kindly of her, considering she was ready to sacrifice him to a demon when he was just a baby."

Storm frowned. "This conversation has devolved into old gossip. You'll have to excuse me." She touched Brian's arm. "Tell Meggan how much I enjoyed sharing the gardens with her."

She strolled toward the group on the veranda, her long white hair and the skirt of her light sundress dancing on her personal breeze.

Jean laughed and told her husband, ~Those two are having entirely too much fun keeping everyone guessing.~

Scott replied via their psi-link.

~They didn't really, did they?~

~I can't read past Gambit's shields, even if peeking wasn't unethical, Scott.~ A mental giggle made her husband smile with her. ~But considering how crazy Pete is about Kitty, I don't think he'd let Remy rub all over him if it were true.~

~Point.~

~Now, you ought to start the barbecue or we'll have a mutiny on our hands. I can hear Hank's stomach growling,~ Jean told him.

~Think Rogue will be back by the time the steaks are done?~

~As soon as she smells them cooking.~

~She's not really hurting, is she?~

~Just a little embarrassed and frustrated. It looks like Remy really has called it quits.~

~Good. They were on and off so often, I got tired of trying to keep score.~

Jean's expression grew serious for a moment.

~So did Remy.~

Scott kissed her.

~You have a soft spot for him. Should I be jealous?~

Jean touched his cheek. "No. But he was there for me when I thought Apocalypse had killed you." She switched back to telepathy. ~He let me past his shields because I desperately needed that connection. And he was genuinely happy when we learned you were in Akkaba — alive.~

"Probably just happy to stop being field leader," Scott replied.

"Thrilled, I think he said, right before he disappeared in Hong Kong for two months."

"So what was it this time, Gumbo?" Wolverine asked as Gambit sauntered back to them.

He had to admit the kid was just about too beautiful for his own good. LeBeau indeed. Gambit had shining, copper-threaded red hair that had been recently cut shorter than he usually wore it, sculpted features, and a lithe body made for sex and fighting.

The red-on-black demon eyes added to Gambit's exotic, dangerous aura. Even if all you ever saw was a flat pic of him there was no denying it. The Cajun was too good-looking even in this group — which included some remarkable specimens. Punch it up with his 'charm' and the 'fuck-me' pheromones and no one could resist wanting him — hell, there weren't many with enough strength of mind to resist period — not if Gambit was trying.

Gambit sank down into a lotus position at Wisdom's feet. He handed one of the sweating bottles of beer he held up to the Englishman, then leaned comfortably against his legs.

"Need a cigarette, homme," Gambit told Wisdom.

Wisdom handed the thief his while he took a swallow of the beer. Gambit took it, shrugged, and put it to his lips, inhaling luxuriously.

He exhaled a trickle of smoke. "Same thing as always, Logan," he said. He sounded a little rough. "If I ain't chasin' her, she's chasin' me."

"Well, if you want her why don't you let her catch you, you stupid git?" Wisdom asked.

Gambit leaned his face against Wisdom's knee. "No one catches Gambit," he said fliply. Wolverine guessed he really didn't want to explain all the ways he and Rogue had ripped each other up. Every time they tried to be together they ended up hurting each other.

"So, you let her think you and this sod were doing the horizontal tango a while back?" Domino asked.

Gambit closed his eyes.

"Maybe she thinks that, maybe she don't. Told her it wasn't her business no more."

He rubbed his cheek against Wisdom's slacks. It wasn't a come on. Just a bit of physical comfort. Gambit needed touch the way a plant needs the sun.

Wolverine studied Wisdom and relaxed, satisfied that he wasn't misinterpreting Gambit. He didn't want the Brit making a move on the thief. Kitty would end up hurt and Gambit would get blamed and then Wolverine would have to gut Wisdom.

He tipped his head back and enjoyed the sun soaking into his bones. There weren't that many quiet periods in the life they led. He knew it wouldn't last and that meant they needed to relax and appreciate the break while they could.

The five originals, as they sometimes thought of themselves, had wandered over to each other, eventually joined by Scott's brother Alex and his on-again, off-again girlfriend slash fiancé Lorna, the present field leaders of X-Factor. They'd commandeered one of the pool-side tables with a red-and-white striped canopy. Jean had telekinetically wafted a pitcher of ice tea and glasses over to the table. Bobby chilled the tea to a slush, making Warren and Hank complain about frozen sinus headaches.

Scott tugged Jean down onto his lap. She nestled back against him, smiling.

"We should do this more often," she said

He inhaled the scent of shampoo from her hair, then chuckled. "I plan to have an anniversary every year for the rest of our lives."

"God, get a room, big brother," Alex groaned, shielding his eyes with his hand.

Scott gave him the finger.

"Oh my God, Scott just flipped someone off," Bobby exclaimed. "He's been possessed or infected or cloned or replaced with an android — oh wait, how would we know — "

"Bite me, Drake."

Jean was giggling helplessly. Hank chuckled.

"That's Jean's job," Warren said. He fanned his huge, white-feathered wings lazily, creating a cooling draft.

Alex groaned. "TMI."

Lorna stretched her arms over her head, then settled into her chair in comfort. "Jean's right. This is heaven. We should do it more often. I'm sick of Falls Edge and answering to government jackasses like Gyrich and Sikorsky."

"So quit and come back to the X-Men," Warren said.

Alex grimaced then glanced at Scott. He said wryly, "I don't think Scott and I could get along on the same team, aside from both of us being used to being in charge."

Summers did sibling rivalry on a whole new level that included major property damage when they lost their tempers. They seemed to be immune to each others' optic and plasma blasts, but their surroundings never were.

"You know, with all the new people we've taken on and some others coming back, we could field a third team," Scott speculated. Jean could hear her husband thinking. Maybe there was some way to make it work. It would take a little thought to get the details right, of course. They had been getting on better since Alex returned from his sojourn in another dimension, though close proximity might screw that up.

"Except for Forge, I bet everyone in X-Factor would come with us," Lorna commented.

"Probably," Alex agreed. "But I don't think the NSA or anyone else in the government would be too happy. Plus X-Factor's affiliation does give us some tenuous influence on the way they deal with mutants and it gives us access to at least some of their information and plans too."

"Point," Scott said.

"One must point out that while today has been most salubrious, indeed an exact example of idyllicism," Hank commented, "it is most definitely not the norm." His eyes crinkled with amusement at his own verbiage.

Bobby formed a snowball in his hands and lobbed into the pool. Paige screamed and sent him a foul look before returning her attention to the no-powers water polo game in progress between members of X-Factor and Gen-X. "Huh. Yeah. No evil megalomaniacs intent on taking over the world, no demons or Sentinels attacking, no aliens hijacking us to save the galaxy, no FOH demonstrations … I don't think Gambit's ex-wife even tried to kill him this time. Anyone getting bored?"

He conjured up another snowball and looked meaningfully toward the lounges by the pool. Jubilee looked asleep. Next to her, Betsy had stripped down to a minimal crimson bikini and stretched out. Neal was massaging sunscreen onto her back.

"War?" he asked.

Warren shook his head. "Your funeral, Bobster."

~Do it and I will dice you up and feed you to the polar bears at the Bronx Zoo,~ Betsy's purple-tinted mental voice warned.

With a disappointed sigh, Bobby let the snowball melt away. "Man, I'm beginning to think the Cajun's right. Telepaths are just no fun."

"I'd have to disagree," Scott said. He gave Jean's waist a squeeze.

"I believe Gambit's words were in fact 'I hate telepaths'," Beast corrected. "Which in no way denigrates their prodigious potential for playfulness."

"Save us!" Bobby responded. "He's alliterating again!"

Warren interjected, "Do you even know what alliterate means, Bobby?"

Bobby got a shifty look on his face. "Uh, no?"

Jean pounced. "Then how could you know what Hank was doing?" A triumphant grin lit her face. She shook her finger at Bobby. "No more pretending to be an illiterate loutish prankster, Robert Drake. Your cover is blown!"

Bobby dropped his face into his arms on the table top and mock sobbed, "Oh, the shame of it!" He lifted his head and blinked puppy-dog eyes at Scott. "This doesn't mean you're going to expect me to participate in War Room strategy sessions or anything, does it?"

Scott assumed his most serious expression. "It's about time you assumed some leadership responsibility, Bobby. After all, you're one of the original X-Men. The Professor will be so proud that you're finally living up to your potential — "

"Aaaaaaah!" Bobby yelled. He jumped up and sped away, nearly knocking Rictor and Siryn off their feet as he plunged toward the mansion.

"You're so mean," Jean said to Scott.

"That's why you love me," he replied.

After the barbecue had been served, a few of those with longer commutes left for home, but most of the party stayed through the long, golden afternoon.

Nick Fury stopped by the terrace to share a cigar with Logan and some of the others he'd met over the years.

Gambit gave him a lazy smile from where he'd stretched out on the warm stone terrace, looking like a lazy panther. SHIELD didn't do business with the Thieves or Assassins Guilds, but Gambit was known to them through his freelance days. Fury knew beyond doubt the bayou pretty-boy act hid a serious predator. They had a file on the man. Nothing proven, but a hell of a lot of speculation, some of it very, very dirty and dark.

"Hello, Nick," Domino greeted him.

He nodded back to the black-haired albino woman and Cable. The two mercs were another couple of thick files full of more questions than answers. Cable called himself Nathan Summers and the X-Men acted like he was part of the family, but there were no records of anyone his age related to the Summers clan. He just appeared one day.

SHIELD had been after him for a long time. They'd caught him, but always regretted it. His affiliation with the X-ers meant trouble would follow if they tried again. Fury decided to ignore Cable's wanted status; he was present as a guest not a SHIELD agent.

"Dom," he responded. Domino had appeared on the mercenary scene a little ahead of Cable, working for the Canadians for a while before she'd ended up as part of the Six Pack. GW had provided detailed information on the merc group's operations while he'd been with them, but no one had a clue to who Domino had been before. She could still pass for a woman in her thirties easily, too.

He pulled out a cigar and lit it.

"Valentina looks marvelous," Domino remarked. Not surprising that Domino knew who his date was. GW had indicated she was a top-notch strategist, much less impulsive than Cable.

He snorted. "Didn't know you did small talk, Dom."

She raised two fine eyebrows. "You want to talk shop? In front of everybody?"

Her gesture encompassed the rest of the group aside from Gambit, Wolverine, and Cable: the White Queen, Kitty Pryde back with Wisdom apparently, and the bony psychotic that called herself Marrow. She was picking her teeth with one of her own bone spikes and eyeing Nick like she was picking where to skewer him.

Fury gritted his teeth. "So, weather-like weather today."

Wolverine chuckled like a chain-saw and exhaled a stream of smoke. "Smooth, real smooth."

Despite himself, Fury grinned. He found a place to half-perch on the stone railing of the veranda and puffed away.

He wasn't a man who felt intimidated often. The gray in his hair and the eye-patch didn't mean he couldn't hold his own in a scrap. But he was the only human in this group of superpowered beings and it was humiliating to realize that every single one of them could take him — without those powers. They were as impressive for their skills and brains as their mutant abilities and they wouldn't hesitate to pump him for any useful information he might let slip.

As a matter of fact, at least one of them wouldn't bother with words …

"Stay out of my head, Frost," he told her. He'd brought a SHIELD developed psi-shield, a modification of a Forge design, but hadn't switched it on. He knew from working with telepaths that psi-sensitives found the devices irritating.

"I'm sure there's nothing interesting in there beyond the latest weather report," Emma replied. She crossed her legs, doing a fair imitation of Sharon Stone.

Fury admired her legs in the white leather as he knew she'd wanted him to. She smirked at him while drawing out a cigarette case and fitting a custom made cigarette into a long, ivory holder. As she put the holder to her lips the cigarette's tip flared pinkish with energy and ignited.

She swung her leg, displaying the spike-heeled boot on her foot. "Thank you, Gambit."

"You're welcome, ma'amzelle," Gambit replied. He had a glass of bourbon in one hand, resting it on his lean stomach, but didn't appear to be drinking it.

"How's GW?" Domino asked.

"Good," Fury answered cautiously.

The Six Pack had dissolved under some ugly pressures. GW Bridge had joined SHIELD and set out to hunt down their erstwhile leader Cable, blaming him for what happened. Domino had stuck with Cable, abandoning mercenary work for the mutant cause, helping train X-Force. GW and Domino hadn't been in touch for years.

A whole lot of people, most of them in the government, considered groups like X-Force and the other X-teams to be mutant terrorists just like the MLF.

A whole lot of people were absolute jackasses in Nick Fury's experience.

Domino smiled. "Tell him I said hi."

"I'll do that."

He glanced at Cable.

"Any messages?"

The brawny, white-haired mercenary grunted. "Ha. No." Yellow energy flared from his unscarred eye.

Fury shrugged and turned his attention to Kitty Pryde. He certainly liked that girl and wished he could have kept her with SHIELD. He'd heard she'd quit the X-teams shortly after the stint she did with his people in order to go to college. It looked like she'd come back. Not surprising, since she was too smart and far too experienced to just drop back into the normal life of a college girl. Xavier had recruited her when she was thirteen. There was no going back, something she must have discovered herself.

"You know you still have a job with me if you want it, Pryde."

He noticed Wisdom giving him a dirty look. No, that was actually a homicidal look. The skinny, scruffy ex-spy looked ready to use those 'hot knives' of his to flay Fury alive.

"I don't think so," Kitty told him. She patted one of Wisdom's hands. Wisdom looked a little less murderous. In other words, Fury thought there might be enough left of his body to actually bury.

"It would probably be bad if you did that, homme, " Gambit drawled. He rolled into a sitting position fluidly. The bourbon in his glass didn't even slosh. He grinned at Wisdom. "But I want to watch if you do."

Wisdom glared at him now. Fury started as Gambit winked at him.

"You reading people's minds now, Cajun?" Wolverine asked.

"Non, leave that to spooks like la reine and Cable, mais the man got his feelings written all over his face," Gambit replied.

Wolverine snorted. "Keep telling everyone that, Gumbo."

"Why do you persist in denying your psi talents, Gambit?" Emma demanded.

Gambit frowned. "Because I'm not a spook, I'm not going to be one and I told him — " His expression closed off and darkened. He tossed back the bourbon suddenly, got to his feet, and stalked away. Clearly, the subject had stirred up something Gambit preferred to ignore.

Fury squirreled away the information. The present Patriarch of the Unified Guilds was — or had the potential to be — a psi of some sort according to the very knowledgeable Emma Frost.

Emma was shaking her head.

"I don't understand why Charles lets him go on denying he's a psi."

"Because if Chuck ever pushes Gambit too hard, he'll be in the wind," Wolverine said. "He don't need the X-Men no more. Don't trust us much either after the Antarctica mess. Storm ain't goin' to be able to drag him back if he leaves, either. Not again." He puffed on his cigarette. "Hell, she might go with him."

"And Xavier can't get through the shields he's already got in place," Cable commented. "That must frustrate him."

"Chuck talks about morals and ethics a lot, but you got a point there," Wolverine acknowledged.

"I'd love to know who did teach him to shield," Emma said. "He can keep everyone out because we don't understand what he's doing — part of it is his charge, but the rest is skill."

"He was definitely taught by a telepath at some time," Cable agreed.

Domino steepled her fingers, looking thoughtful. "He's Guild. They train their kids early."

Wisdom nodded. "First time I met him he was already silk smooth and he couldn't have been more than twenty."

"I've run into a few telepaths from the Assassins," Cable said. "They aren't that good. I don't imagine the Thieves were any better."

"Got an idea about that and it's another sore spot with Chuck," Wolverine said. He looked toward where Gambit had stopped by the pool and begun flirting with Jubilee and some of the other girls. "With the Cajun too, I think."

Interest was expressed by Cable and Frost and even Pryde, but Wolverine looked at Fury and shook his head. "This ain't for anyone outside the team. Sorry, Nick."

Fury shrugged. "Classified, I get."

Frost cocked her head, clearly picking a thought from Wolverine's mind. A look of shock crossed the blonde telepath's patrician features.

"Him?" She looked toward Gambit too, narrowing cool blue eyes. "He makes it so easy to forget what he did, doesn't he? I wonder … That would explain why he hates telepaths."

"He hates telepaths 'cause they're bloody always talking about stuff the rest of us 'aven't got no clue about," Wisdom growled. "Come on, Pryde, there's got to be a private corner somewhere 'round here we can do a little snogging."

Wisdom and Shadowcat wandered away.

Jubilee shouted for Wolverine to join her. With a shrug, he left too, followed by Marrow, who had been so quiet and still Fury had almost forgot her presence.

That left him with Cable, Domino and Frost. He checked his watch.

"Time for the Contessa and I to head back to New York."

Emma rose to her feet.

"I'll make sure security doesn't trigger an alarm when you leave," she said.

She linked her arm with his as they started off the veranda toward where Valentina was intent in a conversation with fellow ex-socialites Betsy Braddock and Janet Van Dyne. Of course, what Frost really meant was she'd stay with Fury to make sure he didn't do any snooping around the mansion before leaving. Since Operation: Zero Tolerance had invaded and stripped their home base, the X-Men had been more secretive and security conscious than before.

Fury didn't blame them. He wondered if they were cautious enough. Virtually every X- affiliated mutant had gathered in one place today — a place that was known to enough of their enemies to make it dangerous. Westchester made a hell of a target for the mutant haters. Not that a platoon of Sentinels could take them out, but it was a day of celebration. They didn't want to fight.

Not his look-out.

The X-Men were big boys and girls. They knew how to take care of themselves.

A portable boombox played old big band classics. Several couples were dancing barefoot on the grass near the pool. Gambit appeared to be waltzing with Storm. Neal Shaara tapped Betsy's shoulder and drew her away from the other women and into his arms. Rogue and Beast were making fun of the other dancers, while Havok and Polaris drifted at the fringe of the group, lost in each other's eyes.

Emma patted Fury's arm and left him to sweep up Warren and demand he dance with her.

Scott and Jean were swaying and shuffling their feet, caught in each other's arms and oblivious to everyone else.

Fury wished Jean and Scott happy anniversary quite genuinely before leaving. The setting sun was behind them as he headed the car toward New York. Beside him in the passenger seat, Valentina stretched and smiled. "They are quite pleasant people, Nicholas," she said.

"They are," he agreed.

Some of the younger kids had ganged up and managed to push Wolverine, all 350 lbs of adamantium-laced bones, muscle and attitude, into the pool. He'd sunk to the bottom of course. His famously strange hair had been matted down and dripping as he climbed out, while water ran from his flannel shirt and jeans. The ultimate insult had been his drowned cigar stub.

The growl and the glare had been classic.

The kids had run off, laughing like loons, to hide behind Professor Xavier. Wolverine had taken two steps toward the wheelchair bound telepath, snorted and stalked off — presumably to find himself dry clothing and another beer — ignoring Jubilee high-fiving her classmates.

"If more of the world could see them as they are today, as normal and human as anyone else, there would be no fear of mutants."

"Yeah, but every one of those 'normal' people back there is more dangerous than a cruise missile. That doesn't bother you and me — "

"Because we're dangerous ourselves," Valentina interrupted.

" — but it scares the shit out of Joe Q. Public."

"Still, it was a good day and nice to see Kitty again."

It had been. The long day had stretched into early evening with the sun only now dropping toward the western horizon behind them. The air glimmered gold and heavy and warm. Long black shadows stretched eastward as they sped down Graymalkin Lane. Fury drove with the driver's side window down, enjoying the smell of summer on the air instead of the SHIELD helicarrier's recycled, sterilized air.

It was the sort of day that reminded Fury of what he did his job to protect. He hoped he and the X-Men would have many more.

Yield

Tue, 27 May 2008 04:36:18 GMT

2: X

AD 2004, August 17
United States
Westchester

"Okay, let me get this straight,” Angelo Espinoza said to Jubilee. The gray-skinned mutant was staring across the pool at a group of the X-Men including Jean Grey and her husband Scott Summers. "Cyclops and Phoenix got married last year — in January — and this is their first anniversary, but they went to the future and lived there for twelve years, so it's also their thirteenth. Does that cover it, chica?"

"Duh. This like their belated anniversary party. Parties."

"Wild."

Jubilee stretched a little, enjoying the warm sun and beautiful weather provided courtesy of the X-Men's weather controlling member Storm. She had staked out the lounge chair by the pool after the quitting the basketball game earlier. There were enough various X-groups gathered on the mansion grounds today to let the games continue non-stop despite the players coming and going.

For the first time in longer than many of them would have liked to think, all was quiet. Emma and Sean had brought the members of the Massachusetts Academy to Westchester, most of X-Force, both X-teams, members of Excalibur, X-Factor, and various ex-members and associates had shown up for the picnic slash party for Scott and Jean. Girlfriends, boyfriends, siblings, and even a parent or two had shown, along with a few exes.

In a remarkable display of good spirits and tolerance, most everyone was ignoring the tensions and disagreements that often sparked between them all. Still, with so many people on the grounds, many sub groups had formed.

It was fascinating to see how they separated into different cliques that weren't based on their teams.

Betsy and Neal Shaara were chatting with Emma. Warren was with Scott and Jean, ignoring his ex-lover and flirting outrageously with the redhead. Lorna Dane, Jean's parents John and Elaine Grey, and several members of the Avengers were with them.

Storm, Paige, Colossus, and Sean were strolling through Storm's gardens.

Siryn, Warpath, Tabitha, Sunspot, Maddrox, Wildchild, Nightcrawler, and Marrow were currently playing basketball, sans powers.

Cecelia was talking with Hank, Moira, Renee, the Professor, Stevie Hunter, Doc Samson, Cable, Forge, and Reed Richards.

Bobby, Sam, Johnny Storm, and Kitty were plotting some prank.

Up on the veranda, another group had congregated to flout the house rules and indulge their tastes for cigarettes, booze, and cynicism.

Wolverine had one of his foulest stogies going and a beer in his hand. Domino had a cigarillo lit and was glaring daggers at Cable's back. Wisdom and Gambit were shoulder against shoulder, sharing a cigarette, amusing themselves by furthering an illusion of intimacy that would feed the rumors that they'd shacked up together in London for a time. Shatterstar was sitting on the terrace stones, in a lotus position, listening to Wolverine. Gambit's ex-wife, the assassin Belladonna, had shown up the day before on Guild business and stuck around. She'd been heard to comment that invulnerable or not, she was sure she could find some way to do in Rogue.

None of the groups were static, the members kept wandering back and forth.

Wisdom cocked his head at the pranksters. "Who's the Popsicle sleeping with these days?"

A snort of laughter came from Wolverine.

"Be nice, Logan," Gambit said lazily, exhaling smoke like a dragon through his nostrils. His scarlet-on-black eyes were half closed.

"Sure, brat," Wolverine growled. He angled a look at Wisdom, who seemed undisturbed to have a loose-limbed Cajun thief draped against his shoulder. The dark-haired ex-Black Air operative sneered at him. "No one's warming the Icicle's bed. The whoopie cushion bit gets old quick."

"Whoopie cushion?" Domino snickered.

"Ouai," Gambit murmured. The sun was warm and making him sleepy.

The people closest to him were some of the few he halfway trusted and so he'd let his psychic shields thin down, which meant his empathy was picking up the happier than normal ambient emotions. It felt good and he let a little of that seep back out, feeding the loop ever so delicately.

He wasn't sure most of the X-Men even understood that his 'charm' was alpha level empathy. He didn't use it as a weapon except in the direst of emergencies and never on his team-mates. He wasn't above nudging them into having a better time today though, anymore than Storm would hesitate to make sure the weather was perfect. He stretched lazily and dropped his head against Wisdom's narrow shoulder. Perfect, he thought, almost wanting to purr.

Wisdom glanced at the shiny auburn head now leaning against his shoulder. The thief looked half asleep and sexy as hell, relaxed as a cat. Something about him sent a jolt of attraction through Pete's system. He looked up and caught Logan's smirk.

"You think it's bad now," Logan said quietly, "you should be around him when he's had about three glasses of champagne."

"What?"

"Fuck you, Logan," Gambit muttered.

"Ya make it tempting, Gumbo," Wolverine growled. He nodded at Domino. "Ya feel it too, right, Dom?"

The albino mercenary eyed the sleepy thief and sort of shook herself. "You mean the urge to strip pretty-boy's clothes off and rub up against him until he purrs?" she asked.

Wisdom's mouth fell open. That described the feeling he had around Gambit half the time. Especially when the thief relaxed. And that sound Gambit made at the back of his throat, like velvet and smoke if those were sounds; he did purr.

Belladonna laughed throatily and stood up, leaning over to ruffle her ex-husband's bangs. "Remy could get a nun wet." She strolled over to the edge of the veranda and surveyed the grounds, eyes taking in sight lines and cover unconsciously. "He doesn't even need to try most of the time."

"Pheromones," Wolverine explained. "Part of the kid's mutation, that 'charm' he talks about sometimes."

"Hunh," Wisdom said.

"The rest of it's some kind of psi thing," Wolverine added. "Gumbo keeps a pretty tight hold of it, unless he gets into the champagne. Only thing I've seen that'll get the kid drunk."

"An' I like champagne," Gambit complained. "Don' ever dare drink it 'round folks, much."

"You drank it at our wedding, sweetie," Belladonna commented.

Gambit slitted scarlet eyes open and gave the blonde a snarky look. "An' look how good that turned out, chere," he said. "Your brother an' me, trying t'kill each other. Don' know which of us Julian wanted more, mais."

Belladonna grinned wickedly. "Considering you'd both had me, it was probably you, thief."

Gambit shuddered.

"Yeech."

Domino and Wolverine started laughing. "Ya got a sick, sick relationship there, Cajun," Logan said over a snicker.

"I do not understand," Shatterstar interjected.

Wisdom looked over at the Mojoverse warrior. "Brothers and sisters are a no-no, Gaveedra," he said. "Brothers and brothers-in-law is sort of frowned on, too."

"Which would be why Remy tried to gut him in that duel," Belladonna laughed.

Gambit shrugged and straightened up, sliding away from Wisdom, clamping his shields down tight and almost unconsciously charging the tiny particles that formed the pheromones he exuded, burning them to dust. The air sparked for a nanosecond and smelled like lightning, then nothing. He should have known better than to relax so much.

"I'm gonna get another beer," he muttered and retreated into the mansion, heading for the kitchen.

"Way to kill a mood, Boudreaux," Wolverine remarked.

"We just got too much past between us," Belladonna said. She gave a sharp nod. "Think it's time I got out of here." She slipped over the veranda rail and ghosted away toward the garage where she'd left her rented car on her arrival the day before.

He had his head in the big commercial-sized refrigerator, trying to unearth his Black Voodoo beer from behind Wolverine's Molsons.

"I saw the ex splitting," Rogue said to Gambit.

Her words didn't make him jump. His spatial-kinetic sense had registered her movement and the volume displacement of the air she moved through as she entered the kitchen.

Being able to manipulate the charge holding molecules together meant always being aware of his surroundings at that molecular level. Because Gambit had come to the X-Men already expert in his powers, no one had ever explored how they worked; no one had ever considered that at the levels he worked with atomic, chemical, and electric were indistinguishable. They hadn't a clue to the power he kept in check even after Sinister's surgery to curb it. Even with his shields closed down tight and his empathy shut down, he still knew whenever anyone was near. If anyone said anything, he'd say a good thief needed to always be alert.

"Hey, chere," he replied, then, spotting the bottles on the back shelf, "Gotcha!"

He bent and retrieved the last two bottles from the far bottom shelf, then straightened up, a bottle in each long-fingered hand. He bumped the fridge door closed with his hip. It was a show-off move meant to draw attention to those narrow, narrow hips and it did. Nature had given Remy LeBeau a beautiful body and face. He used both the same way he did his native intelligence. At some point, it had become reflex, especially around Rogue. He did another pheromone burn-off though. He didn't want to torture her — much.

"Got the Guild business done yesterday," he said. "She don't have much time to hang out."

Running the Unified Guilds had finally killed any lingering romantic feelings he had for Belladonna. She hadn't accepted any contracts on him since the Guilds unified, which translated as a good working relationship between a Thief and an Assassin, but not passion. They both had a nostalgic fondness for the past they shared, but no more. They'd just grown too far apart.

It was much too pretty a day to be worrying any more about his responsibilities as Patriarch of the Unified Guilds. They'd be Belladonna's headache soon enough if what they'd talked about last night worked out.

He headed for the back door. He figured the beer would be enough to bribe Wisdom into giving him another cigarette since someone (Storm, he thought darkly) had slipped into his room and made his own stash disappear.

Meanwhile, it was just too much fun to tease Rogue.

He stopped at the door and glanced back. "You coming with, Rogue?"

"You going to share that beer?"

"Non, this is for Pete."

A grin lit up Gambit's face as he turned around. Let her chew on that!

"Remy!"

"What, chere?" he asked. He glanced over to the shaded bit of terrace and ascertained that Wisdom and the rest of Cynics Anonymous were still gathered there. It looked like Cecelia and Banshee had joined them.

Rogue hurried after him, letting the kitchen door bang shut behind her, and set her gloved hand on his arm. Gambit paused and raised an eyebrow at her. Rogue rarely initiated contact even when she was gloved.

"Remy…? Did you…." Rogue flushed pink. "Did you and Wisdom, um, were you … together?"

"Together?" Gambit echoed. He was enjoying this. It was cruel, but he was. She'd had her flings with Joseph and Piotr, but Dieu forbid Gambit find someone to keep him warm after she left him to die in Antarctica. He'd run into Wisdom in North Africa while the ex-Black Air spy was on the outs with Shadowcat. They'd got drunk together and cursed the day they heard of Charles Xavier's dream. They might have passed out in the same bed a time or two, but nothing had happened between them.

"You know. Together. "

"Ran into each other in Tangiers and did a little work together, chere, if that's what you're meaning," he teased.

"Oooh!" Rogue stamped her foot. Gambit had to fight down laughter. "No. Damn it, Remy, did you sleep with Pete Wisdom!?" she yelled.

Half a dozen heads swiveled around to stare at the couple just outside the kitchen.

"Yeah, Gumbo, did you?" Jubilee shouted from poolside. "Inquiring — non-telepathic — minds want to know!"

Pete Wisdom bent over and buried his face in his hands, nearly lighting his black hair on fire with his forgotten cigarette. Domino plucked it away. His back shook. From a distance, he might have been sobbing. Of course, from close up, he was sobbing with laughter. Wolverine just shook his head.

Banshee looked heavenward. "Jubilee!"

"What!?"

Her teacher clutched his head dramatically.

Emma Frost chuckled and commented, "She only says what everyone else is thinking."

Sam set his hands on Kitty's slender shoulders, obviously meaning to draw her to him for comfort.

Kitty shrugged him away and caught Bobby's gaze.

Both of them began giggling. The thought of her boyfriend and the X-Men's enigmatic thief in a relationship wasn't so strange, but they'd already discussed whether the rumor held water and dismissed it. Then they'd both admitted it was material for some damned hot fantasies. Something they were never going to mention to either man. Bobby put it simply, 'No way am I admitting to fantasizing about either of them. I don't want to end up skewered, blown up, or pancaked by a pissed off Rogue.'

Bobby loved a good practical joke too. He did admire the slick way Gambit and Wisdom kept the rumors going without a word. It had certainly stirred up the other X-Men when the gossip started. Once he'd been sure it didn't bother Kitty, he done a little rumor-mongering himself just to fan the flames.

"I think I better go after Pete. He's already been banged around by one pissed-off ex when Piotr showed up at the Chalk and Cheese that time," Kitty said. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stop any more giggles.

"He's dead meat if Rogue goes after him," Bobby said matter-of-factly.

"Poor Rogue."

"Ah don't understand," Sam interrupted. "How can ya'll just laugh?"

"Because if Pete and Remy were shagging each other senseless," Kitty explained, "neither one of them would have ever let it slip. They're just having everybody on."

"Well, Ah don't see what ya could do if Miss Rogue did get mad enough to go after Pete."

Kitty sighed. "I'd just phase us both and wait for Logan and Remy to get her calmed down."

Remy looked at Rogue with a smirk. Her face had gone beet red.

"Oh, my God," she moaned to herself.

He transferred the second beer bottle to his left hand with the first then stretched out his right and, using his gloved middle fingertip rather than his index since it was bare where he'd cut that finger of the glove out, tipped Rogue's chin up.

"Rogue, chere, if I did or didn't, I still wouldn't tell. Same as you and me. You understand, some things, they ain't secret, but they are private," he told her seriously. That much wasn't part of the game he'd been playing with her ever since returning from Antarctica.

Rogue blinked big green eyes at him.

"Sugar …"

"You want to ask me if I sleep wit' the hommes too, I'll tell you," Remy said seriously. He saw no reason to lie. Nor much purpose since Rogue had absorbed enough of his memories from their disastrous contacts in Israel and Antarctica to know the truth if she were willing to look at what she'd taken from him. "Ouai. You got enough of my memories in your head, you know that if you think about it. But who … well, that ain't your right to ask no more." He met her gaze until she lowered her lashes and nodded.

"Remy," she said quietly. "I want it to be."

"Chere, I don't think I can dance this dance again."

"I love you, Remy."

"Love ain't ever been the problem, Rogue, and you know it." He let his hand hover within millimeters of her bare cheek. "It's trust. You say you can't trust me, but you really don't trust yourself enough to do anything about your powers."

"You bastard."

Remy shrugged ever so gracefully. He'd realized he couldn't go on letting Rogue use his past and his problems to hide her own. "Probably." His voice hardened, but held no anger. "I'm steppin' off the merry-go-round, Rogue."

He walked away from her and back to his companions, handing Wisdom the second beer and twisting the cap off his own. Rogue glared at them then shot into the air.

continued in next post

In Which I Post the Thing Wot Should Not Have Ever Been Written

Tue, 27 May 2008 04:28:44 GMT

An X-Men fic, bearing no relation to current comic continuity (insert hysterical laughter) and even much of anything before 2000. I will go on posting pieces of this until it's all up, according to a schedule known only to myself and subject to mood, internet access, other priorities and coming to my senses.

Note: This was never beta-ed. I may fix any mistakes I notice as I post. If you see something that makes you crazy, comment with that c&p-ed. I'll likely fix it.

I may even remember to cut tag.

I'll probably get around to doing internal links, but it's tagged 'yield', anyway.

And Not to Yield

1: Orbit

AD 2227, October 17
High Earth Orbit
Mars Expedition Mission Control

The Ares Explorer IV tumbled out of control toward Earth's atmosphere, one thruster still firing erratically, a blackened hole torn in its frame where its second fusion plant had blown out.

Mission control, operating from the top of the new orbital elevator, tried desperately to contact any of the crew on board. Telemetry insisted there were still people alive on the ship, only they weren't replying. The ship had been thrown drastically off course by the explosion and was steadily approaching Avalon Station's defensive perimeter.

Vast and enigmatic, Avalon remained silent as always, composed of curves and equipment unimaginable to the engineers and scientists of the human world, circling in high geosynchronous orbit. Where their vehicles and achievements had the impressive look of something designed and put together to the most exacting standards, Avalon appeared organic, as though its metals and strange ceramics had grown and flowed together.

No one human had stepped foot on Avalon in almost three hundred years. Anything approaching it had been summarily destroyed, just as anything trying to pierce the Great Barrier between Genosha and the rest of the world was. No one really wanted to think about what could be beyond the opalescent veil of power that denied any sort of probe of the island in the midst of the Indian Ocean.

The Interdict had been in place for two centuries. Among many academics and the military some speculation existed that the Barrier and Avalon's defenses were automatic and the inhabitants of the space station and island nation were gone, victims of lingering effects of the bio-weapons used in the Gene Wars. It was wishful thinking.

Genosha had closed itself off long ago at the end of the Gene Wars. Humans and mutants had seemed intent on destroying each other then, unable to exist together, until in a single stroke the mutants' leader had devastated the human forces. He'd used that success to force the world to accept the occupation and separation of Genosha, then erected the Great Barrier. Nothing and no one had passed it since.

The same rules had applied to the space around Magneto's rebuilt city-sized space station.

Ares Explorer IV was a tiny speck even to the cameras at C3. It flickered as it rolled.

Max Parsons watched the image on one monitor. Radar and a dozen other sensors' readings were displayed too, but he always preferred what he could interpret with his own vision. Despair stabbed through him. Avalon used mostly microwave and magnetic weapons. There wouldn't be anything to see until they struck the ship.

There might have been time to launch a shuttle and intercept the ship before it hit atmosphere if it hadn't been for Avalon Station. Any second he expected its defenses to wake and destroy Ares Explorer as had done many others.

He waited, watching the plot course on another monitor. Closer and closer the ship spun toward the vast space station, closer than anything had approached it in generations.

It stopped.

The ship stopped in place.

Max caught his breath, while several of his technicians tried to make sense of what they were seeing. It violated the laws of physics. It wasn't possible. Outrage and fear colored their voices.

Max thought of the campy videoons he'd watched as kid, wild, silly kid's shows where the good guys defeated the mutant menace. Mutants had strange abilities that could contravene the laws of physics. Later, in school, they'd studied the Gene Wars and he'd been curious enough to learn they didn't negate physics, but manipulated the laws of the universe innately rather than through technology and machines.

He watched as the Ares Explorer turned over and slowly moved toward Avalon. There was no glowing aura or forcebeam locked on it. It just moved through the vacuum.

"Switch to the Spyglass System," Max directed his assistant. Spyglass was a sphere of surveillance satellites placed at Trojan points just beyond Avalon's no-go zone. They watched it twenty-four/seven, three-hundred-sixty-five days a year, monitoring the space station for changes.

"Yes sir."

Alaric input the codes that gave C3 control of Spyglass and brought an image up on the main screen. It switched rapidly as he scanned through various cameras to find the best view. Max blinked and grunted as the image stopped with a clear picture of the Ares Explorer. It looked like it would slam into the blank blue metal of the space station.

Then the metal just flowed open, accepting the human ship and engulfing it.

"Oh my god," someone blurted out.

Ares Explorer disappeared and the liquid metal slid back together, flowing into itself and solidifying into the same blank wall.

Nothing.

Nothing for twelve hours, while Max as head of mission control, the military and the bureaucracy back-and-forthed with the UEN, the UNA, PanAfrica, and Pacifica representatives that had funded the Mars mission. No one knew what to do or what it might mean. Avalon had been silent and motionless for so long, reacting only defensively, that no one could believe it had absorbed a ship. Spyglass and its predecessors had observed it for over a century and never seen anything come or go.

Now it acted.

The representative from the United Nations of America bleated that something would have to be done. Pacifica counseled caution and a watching brief. PanAfrica and the UEN wanted more information.

Max wanted his ship and its crew back. He didn't think loud noises and demands would get anything from Avalon.

He was simply sitting at one of the monitor banks watching the Spyglass feed of Avalon when it frosted over with static.

"What the — ?"

The static dissolved into a man's face. It was a pale yet human face, handsome in sharp fashion. His ears came to elfin points neatly framed by dark hair. He appeared to be wearing a charcoal gray uniform including a quilted or armored jacket. It had a shoulder flash in the form of a black on red X.

Max stared and swallowed hard. He was looking at a mutant. He was looking at an overriding video feed from Avalon Station.

A second later the speakers buzzed to loud life as the unknown man spoke.

"I am Northstar, Avalon Station Prime. I have been authorized by the Triune to inform you that the UN ship Ares Explorer IV has been recovered while trespassing within the Avalon security perimeter. Our scans indicated this was not a deliberate violation, as the ship had sustained a catastrophic failure and the crew were consequently incapacitated."

Northstar paused and nodded as though hearing something that wasn't being transmitted.

"Emergency repairs are being made to Ares Explorer while medical treatment is given to the crew. Estimated time to conclusion is twenty-three hours. At that point, both will be allowed to leave Avalon. Any interference or attempt to retrieve them before will be regarded as a hostile act and responded to appropriately."

Max let out an explosive sigh.

Another burst of static and the feed from Spyglass resumed.

The UN was going to go batshit. The mutants were suddenly present as they hadn't been for centuries. It had been easy to ignore them and pretend they didn't exist when they didn't communicate. But now they had.

He wondered what had changed or if they always would have responded the same way they had to the crippled ship.

He wondered, almost enviously, what Ares Explorer's crew were seeing on Avalon.

place holder test post

Fri, 23 May 2008 18:09:26 GMT

Yadda yadda journalfen account, new user name, must load up an icon or two, am headachy, irritable, frustrated already today. Why'd I want this anyway?

Not a great day yesterday, doesn't look like today will be any more productive.

I shoulda stayed in bed.

Oooh, good mood choices though.